After an ISTEP-free freshman year, sophomores were required to take the test once again. The state requires sophomores to take ISTEP, in March and April, along with the ECA.

This year, sophomore Anna Andress found that ISTEP seems to have gotten easier than it was in 8th grade when she last took the test. Even though ISTEP has gotten easier, it still seemed to be a big inconvenience and time-consuming for students.

“I was upset because it is a waste of time and I don’t know what the scores will actually be used for,” Andress said.

Sophomore Thomas Voils also reflected the same feelings towards ISTEP as Andress, but he also found an inconsistency between teachers and how much emphasis they put on the test. Not only were the teachers inconsistent, but the students were also differing in their attitudes toward ISTEP.

“Not a lot of people took it seriously, which they had a good reason not to because of ECA, so they didn’t care as much,” Voils said.

Both Voils and Andress thought that the process of taking the test went smoothly and without much problem. However, sophomore Eli Newell accidentally missed showing up to his first testing day.

“Honestly I completely forgot about ISTEP. It was the first class of the day, and I just spaced it and didn’t hear an announcement for it,” Newell said.

When Newell realized he had forgot to take the test, he went down to the counseling office to find where his class had gone, since they were not in his English classroom. The counseling office told Eli he could remake the test during his 3rd mod resource that same day.

Even with this tiny error, Newell felt that he did pretty well on ISTEP. He also felt a dislike towards the test just like other sophomores.

Newell said, “I didn’t like how each section only had a few questions, so if you missed one completely, your score would go down quite a bit.Overall, I don’t like ISTEP but didn’t think it was that challenging, just time consuming.”