by Alyssa Pena | staff writer

All year your teachers have been preparing you for this day; you took the practice tests, endured the tedious lessons, and have taken too many standardized tests to possibly keep track of them all. And now it’s the day of the big AP test, and you’re ready to crawl out of bed at an early hour to prepare. However, you feel nauseous, feverish, and woozy. You’re too sick to even move an inch in your bed, let alone get ready for the test. Unfortunately, you’ll have to miss the test.

Since the beginning of third grade, it’s been drilled into the heads of students that standardized tests are mandatory and help the school, the district, and the state measure the caliber of intelligence and the retention of information that students possess. But despite their mandatory label, students may still be absent on test day for various reasons, and there are certain procedures that must take place in that situation.

“We have a very high attendance rate on the day of testing. The answers we usually get are that they are home sick,” assistant principal Elaine Maze said.

Although they miss these tests, most students do not know that they have to make them up regardless.

“They are required for graduation, but during that week if someone is out, we have a testing window where we can do make ups,” Maze said. “After that time, the next opportunity they have to test would be in July and after that in December.”

And while students stress over the material, teachers continue to reiterate the significance of the exams.

“I think it really begins with our teachers,” lead counselor Courtney Tarbox said. “The teachers of those subjects that they test remind them [students] how important the test is, that they do need it for graduation, and they always want to try their best.”

After an entire week of STAAR testing, students then have to prepare for two weeks of AP testing in May. This time, if students are absent for an AP exam, it’s more difficult to actually make up this test compared to the district’s standardized ones.

“It’s up to the school to offer that late [AP] testing, and we do. Johnson does offer late testing,” Tarbox said. “College Board does dictate what date and time those late tests will be, and they also dictate the fee because there is a fee students pay if they are going to be late testing.”