The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress Test, or the CAASPP, is California’s state-mandated benchmark exam. For the past two weeks, the English, math, and science portions of the exam have been administered to all of the juniors here at Elsinore High School. As a senior writing this, I’m aware of how tempting it is to just sleep through each test, especially since they don’t have any impact on your current classes; but the advantages that doing well on this test provide go much further than final grades! Benefits include:

• An entire letter grade boost for a math class on your transcript if you do well on the math portion of the CAASPP (depending on the teacher)!
• The better our school does on the exam, the more “rigorous” it looks to college and university admissions; your grades will look better because colleges will infer that they come from a challenging school
• You can get a pin at the end of your senior year that you can wear during graduation!

While CAASPP testing will likely be over by the time this is released, this is a call of encouragement to Elsinore High School’s rising junior class; make sure to try hard on next year’s exam!