Managing Assessment Overload

Northern Valley is a rigorous academic environment that demands a high level of engagement in order to be successful, and our students often challenge themselves with multiple opportunities. Within this environment, classroom assessments can often be scheduled concurrently. Managing high school coursework and multiple assessments provides students real-time practice in the life skills they will need in college and career. This process involves good time management, responsible work balance, and self-advocacy. We understand that with the high demands of our academic programs, comes some stress and anxiety for our students.

To assist in these skills and the stress and anxiety associated with our rigorous academic environment, we have developed a system to limit the number of major assessments a student can have in a given day to three. A major assessment will be defined as an assessment that requires 30 minutes or more time to complete. We encourage students to further develop their self-advocacy skills by reaching out to teachers if they have more than three assessments that will last 30 minutes or more on a given day. The student should send an email within one day of the 4th assessment being assigned; 'copy' all teachers involved and their guidance counselor; speak directly with the teacher who assigned the fourth assessment and arrange an alternate time to take it. It would be expected that the student takes the assessment the very next opportunity after its administration on the following day. The default time would be right after school during extra help time in the media center if a mutually agreed upon time cannot be decided.

We understand that there are many other ways in which students can be academically overloaded (tests, quizzes, reports, presentations, term papers, etc.). We encourage students to communicate with their teachers and counselors to help manage these demands effectively.