On April 11, Whitman administrators announced a new testing schedule that will be implemented at the beginning of quarter four.

The schedule designates each day of the week to a different department, allowing tests to be staggered. On Mondays and Thursdays, Art, Career/Technology Education, English and Science teachers may give assessments while on Tuesdays and Fridays, Math, P.E., Health, Social Studies and World Language teachers may give assessments. In the event of holidays or schedule changes, teachers may give assessments on Wednesdays.

Additionally, the calendar allows reassessments outside of class to occur on any day, but reassessments during class must adhere to the calendar. 

Sophomore Charlotte Thatch finds it hard to balance her academic workload and believes the testing schedule could help students in similar positions. 

“It’s hard to find time to study for one test, but having multiple on the same day forces me to focus on one and not the other, ” Thatch said. “I go to sleep super late studying, then try to wake up even earlier to cram some last-minute reviewing in. I had five tests in a day one time, which was so stressful and overwhelming.”

In the announcement, assessments are defined as marking period assessments, end-of-unit tests, final evaluations, projects, performance-based assessments, and other similar formative and summative demonstrations of a student’s mastery of grade level or course material. The schedule also requires teachers to announce assessments as soon as possible.

Senior Jinara Weerakoon has mixed feelings about the new testing schedule and believes it could potentially harm the curriculum’s schedule in some of her classes.

“Maybe this schedule will partially help with student stress,” Weerakoon said. “Some of my teachers have already said they will continue teaching material but push back tests, possibly making it worse.”

However, the calendar does provide some leniency for teachers. For instance, if a test has multiple parts over several class periods, the first day of the test must be on a designated testing day for the department, but the following parts can fall on the days directly following it.

AP Physics teacher Katharine Ostrowski is skeptical of how much stress the schedule will relieve after experiencing a staggered test schedule when teaching at Richard Montgomery High School.

“It ended up creating new stresses where we had to test students on material that they had learned a while ago, which wasn’t ideal for the students,” Ostrowski said. “People also didn’t like how complicated it made planning for teachers, especially AP classes with frequent tests.”