One of Rocklin High’s greatest prides is it’s API score. For the past nine years we have gotten the highest score in Placer County and everyone on campus knows it. Our administration values this title so much that year after year they entice student’s to do their best by offering a free barbeque, dance, and various forms of public humiliation such as dying their hair blue.

Not only that, but an annual Academic Assembly is held, giving student’s with improved scores free t-shirts and the opportunity to win a variety of prizes. The announcement of our score each year is a huge fanfare, further ingraining this idea of accomplishment and Rocklin pride into the heads of our student body.

However, next year this will no longer be. The California Board of Education has voted to suspend CST testing for a year, with the exception of juniors, in order to allow schools to acclimate themselves to the common core. Part of the reason for doing this is that the state wants to entirely change the way the test is structured. Their hope is to have a computer-based test that calculates a student’s level of understanding rather than just the number they get correct.

For each question a student answers correctly, they will be given a “harder” question. The goal is to see what level a student understands a certain concept. For example Student A may have gotten the same number of correct questions as Student B, however they were answering Level 1 questions while Student B was answering at Level 4.

This is indisputably a huge change in the way students test, in fact it is uncharted territory. Furthermore, the scores will be virtually incomparable to the CST results we have now, rendering all data we now obtain irrelevant.

For a school that has always performed significantly well on the traditional CST test this is going to be a shock. Scores will undoubtedly drop the first couple years while the state decides how to grade schools as a whole rather than the individual. Not only that, but because there is no test this year it is impossible for us to be the best in Placer County and Rocklin will no longer be able to claim that we have had  the consecutive highest score.