TOLEDO, Ohio — It's third period on Friday at Birmingham Elementary in central Toledo, and Lisa Pfiffer's third-grade class is going through one final review before they embark on state testing.
With laptops out, the class drills through everything from the basics of starting the test to how to think through challenging questions.
The test goes over all of the different reading and language skills they've learned throughout the year, and the students have gone over the practice test portal again and again like their education depended on it.
And to a certain degree, it does. Students must achieve a minimum score -- currently a 685 -- to move on to fourth grade, Jennifer Lawless, a senior director of college and career readiness with the Ohio Board of Education, said.
It is not a lost cause if your kid is intimidated by test-taking, though.
"We provide additional support such as small group learning, working one-on-one, we call them intervention assessment teachers, and those are just few examples. But that starts early on. We don't just start at the beginning of the third-grade year and try to do all the supports in one calendar year," Lawless said.
But Pfiffer's class, and many like it, have another hurdle that the education department is aware of: just two years ago, as first graders, these students were learning to read and write over zoom classes due to COVID-19 health and safety restrictions.
"Our educators have been working very hard to overcome those deficiencies, and it certainly has had an impact, as it had on all of us," Lawless said.
But with the aggressive preparation Lawless said she's seen at Birmingham Elementary and other schools across the state, she's certain the majority of these students are ready to pass the test.
"They were doing amazing and you could just tell by their responses to the individual questions the teacher was asking they had navigated that system many times before," Lawless said.
Those third graders are taking the test next week, and testing will continue all through the month of April and into early May.
Next year, the score to pass will likely increase as the state board of education has committed to continue increasing the score every year until at least the 2024-25 school year.