As the school year comes to a close, students tend to get lazier but work starts to pile up. Last year, due to Covid-19 finals and state testing was canceled; this year the Board of Education decided to cancel finals but continue on with state testing, known as the NJSLA. It is familiar to all that junior year can be the most challenging, so right when juniors thought the year was almost over it gets worse. After taking the NJGPA in the beginning of the year, juniors thought that was the end of state testing but it wasn’t.

What even is the NJSLA? According to the NJ Gov website, it “measures student proficiency with grade level skills, knowledge, and concepts that are critical to college and career readiness.”

Grades 3-9 will being taking the ELA and math section while grades 5, 8, and 11 will be testing for science. That means that everyone but the freshman get to sleep in all of next week! But sadly the juniors must come in on regular time on the following week, Monday and Tuesday, to take their science NJSLA. Since juniors had an option for which science course they wanted to take,

We asked a few juniors on their opinion of the NJSLA:

“I feel like it’s completely useless and a waste of time. I don’t think that it measures anything but a student’s ability to sit still for more than an hour. With the AP tests and SAT testing it’s a lot for juniors and adds an unneeded layer of stress to their year especially when things are supposed to be slowing down,” junior Sofia Wunej said.

“I think it is pointless, most students don’t do well because many have test anxiety and one test shouldn’t determine so much. It is just more stress added to students with so much other things to focus on,” junior, Mia Rivera said.

“It is dumb because standardized testing is an aged system and is set up it make students fail. How can we expect students to perform to their best of their abilities, when it’s 7am in the morning and we’re all sleep deprived because we had sports, work, homework, etc. It’s dumb” junior Riya Kachroo said.

“It is not okay especially while students need to focus on AP testing and tests that will actually affect their GPA’s,” junior Mia Kahrar said.

Gathering all these quotes it seems like the juniors aren’t happy to be taking the NJSLA next next week but at least it’s not as much as the freshmen. It appears to everyone that it is kind of pointless and doesn’t affect the student specifically.