On January 7, 2026, students walked into Indian Hills Middle School with spirits low. Many are feeling tired and frustrated. This isn’t the right mindset for learning, but can you blame them? It is the second day back from winter break, and what do they have? A MAP test.
Multiple students, as well as teachers, have expressed frustration over the timing of the test. An eighth grader, Jack Mich, says, “I think it’s stupid, because, like, nobody really knows anything, and we need to recharge our brains, right?”
Jack is right. The fact of the matter is that after a two-week period of general laziness, students often don’t retain some of the information that they’ve learned. The same thing happens after summer break, which is why fall MAP and iReady scores decrease from the spring. Is this how we want to test our students? Right after a two week break? Seems to me that this isn’t a good testing environment for accurate scores.
In the future, we could put the MAP test before winter break, like the iReady test, or at least give students a two-week briefing period to get back into a learning mindset before slapping them with a standardized test.
Hopefully this changes, so future students don’t have to endure the pain and inaccuracy that comes with a MAP test after winter break.
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