Jackson-Reed has implemented plenty of new policies this year, and the most recent has been the attendance requirement during CAPE and AP testing. 

During previous school years, if a student didn’t have CAPE testing in the morning, they weren’t required to come to school until classes began after lunch.

However, DCPS’s new policy has changed this year, requiring students to come to school for no purpose other than to sit in the auditorium. 

I can think of many reasons why this demand is unpopular with the student body at Jacson-Reed. Only a small number of students—the freshman class—actually has to take multiple days of testing. This means all juniors and seniors, none of whom have standardized testing, are told to sit for half a day in the auditorium for six days.  Half of the sophomore class has a week of pointless sitting around, too. 

The only situation in which this requirement becomes helpful is if you choose to go to one of the AP study halls being held by teachers; otherwise, you waste about three hours desperately trying to fill the time you could be doing almost anything else with. 

Of course, like all other policies that DCPS has adopted, there is a reason for this, likely due to an increase in low in-seat attendance. Whatever the reason happens to be, it doesn’t seem to be significant enough to keep the rest of us in the building for more time than is actually necessary for academic purposes.

The new attendance policy becomes especially annoying when it comes to AP exams. In the past, depending on the time their test took place, all AP students were exempt from morning or afternoon classes. Now, students are expected to show up for every class on exam day and spend around three hours in the gym taking an AP test, in addition to regular classes. 

Not only do AP tests require a lot of preparation and countless hours of studying, but they are also very tiring once finished. You spend multiple hours in the gym with other students taking the same stressful test, all while proctors walk around looking over your shoulder. 

Additionally, you’re expected to know every single detail of a multi-unit subject and understand the millions of ways of applying said subject to whatever question they give you.

All of that being said, we as students can only adapt, but please, DCPS, going forward, can we keep these new reforms and policies to a minimum? •