Math students in Algebra 1, Geometry, and MJ 2 Advanced can expect to participate in an exploratory pretest Wednesday. A new state mandated Differential Accountability Assessment has been designed to evaluate students and give teachers an understanding on where their classes lie in order to prepare for the end-of-course exams in the spring.

“It’s not designed for it to be formally graded,” Assistant Principal for curriculum Jackie Ingratta said. “It’s designed for the teacher to look at it and see the individual strands where students may be weak.”

Ingratta said students do not need to worry about the scores affecting their grade-point averages.

“Students for the most part would do bad, because they haven’t been taught the material yet,” she said. “That’s why this test is a formative assessment, because you can’t grade on something that they haven’t learned.”

Ingratta added that she feels confident about student performance on the assessment.

“[I expect students to do] extremely well. Based on last year’s geometry scores, every single student would’ve passed.”

Mary Anderson, a biology teacher, however, is a bit concerned for her students.

“I’m worried cause the curriculum is really wide,” she said. “They’ll say they have one question, and it’ll have a huge topic. There’s two questions about evolution, but that’s a really broad topic. So it’s kind of hard to prepare.”

By Paula Kostro