Last week, Pascack Valley High School juniors participated in state-mandated NJGPA testing required to graduate. However, unlike other years, all grades were required to come into school with the juniors and attend their morning classes.
In past years, juniors came in at 8 a.m., and all other grades came in at 10 a.m., allowing all grades to attend their classes for the day just for shortened periods. This year, all students came in at 8 a.m., causing all juniors to miss their morning classes for three consecutive days, missing a total of 12 class periods of instruction.
The schedule was changed so that all other grades could continue instruction as normal. While this may have benefitted non-test-taking students, it had negative results, particularly for the testing juniors.
The lost time is particularly harmful for juniors who normally attend AP classes in the mornings. Pascack Valley’s schedule already sets students behind for AP exams by around a month, since school starts in late August or early September, whereas other schools (mostly outside of New Jersey) start as early as July. The change in schedule sets students back even more, and AP teachers and juniors are struggling to catch up.
Furthermore, a lot of these classes either have students from other grades in the class, or there’s a different period in the afternoon whose classes were undisrupted. So, either those students’ instruction was also interrupted, or the juniors were forced to make up the material the others learned in the classroom at home, during a time when there isn’t supposed to be homework.
Numerous teachers and students expressed their concerns about having sufficient time to teach and learn, but unfortunately, the schedule still went into effect.
Additionally, the week was also draining for the teachers and other grades, for whom the schedule was made in the first place, since every day that week was changed to have an all-eight schedule. This means that instead of dropping two different classes every day, allowing for a break in work and class preparation and a variety in the order of classes, students and teachers had to attend every class every day in the eight-period order.
To make matters worse, on Monday of this week, Pascack Valley had a tech-free day. Due to this, lots of students’ instruction was once again disrupted, and teachers were once again frustrated.
One anonymous teacher said, “It was an exhausting week where not much was accomplished.”
Other students and teachers who chose to remain anonymous also explained their frustrations with a schedule that, in the end, helped few and hurt many.
