Every year in the springtime, juniors take the Nebraska State Accountability Test, other wise known as NeSA testing. Throughout the state of Nebraska, all juniors take the NeSA test in the category of writing. All juniors are given the same prompt to write about. Alliance High School juniors took the writing test last spring, but there was a problem.

The writing tests are graded by an independent grading group to get a score. There are at least three readers that read and go through each test and come to a consensuses on a score. This year, the state had a new system to score the papers. Readers were brought in from Minnesota, instead of using readers from Nebraska. Mrs. Smith, an English teacher at AHS, commented that she thought “the kids connected very well with the prompt this year”, and that she was “very pleased with their writing abilities”. “People would have been pleased with the writing the kids did,” Smith added.

Due to the new system, the computers glitched and added page breaks or messed up all of the essays. The students at AHS did not complain of any mess up with their test though. Here’s the catch. Since none of the students experienced any difficulties; the English teachers question where the problem came from. Since so many of the schools had complications, the state threw out all of the juniors hard work.

Out of the estimated one hundred and thirty nine Alliance High juniors who took the NeSA test, approximately twenty of them were below standard. The scores for the test are simple. A thirty-nine and below is below the standard. To meet the standard, a student must score a forty to a fifty-six. To exceed the standard, a person must score a fifty-seven to a seventy, which is a perfect score.

Many are disheartened about the scores being thrown out. Mrs. Smith believes that this year’s scores would have been high and brought AHS up in school rankings. The writing test scores won’t help however because of the thrown out test scores. Last years test scores would have brought up the enthusiasm in the school and have encouraged this year’s juniors to do well also.