This user manual will guide you in the application of remote state high-stakes testing. To ensure successful test administration for your district’s remote students, follow each of these steps before you begin administration of the State Test and after you pour yourself a really, really big mug of coffee:

  • Before handing out tests to each grade cohort, take a moment to confirm that you, the test administrator, are wearing pants.
  • Sign the mandatory nondisclosure agreement. A reminder that when you mail back these agreements, they should not be torn into what some of you have referred to as “teeny, tiny bits that you can stuff up the Commissioner’s [expletive].”
  • Remind students younger than ten that if they experience technical issues, they should bypass the adults in their home and go directly to their older siblings, who are the only ones who know how to make their Chromebooks function properly.
  • Remember that using alcoholic beverages while administering the test is strictly prohibited unless you can successfully hide it in your coffee mug or until students have submitted their tests. Drinking heavily is both permitted and encouraged after then.
  • Prepare the remote testing environments: Ask students to remove from view or cover any text, calculators, educational posters, stuffed animals, moldy bread crusts, cozy blankets, life-sized Jojo Siwa cardboard cutouts, 200 pages of recycled paper with doodles on the other side, siblings, and pets of all varieties — even fish, as research has shown high-stakes testing can cause stress and anxiety that leads to fin rot. In fact, the administrator should take this opportunity to remind students in stern tones that if they had removed some of that stuff earlier in the year, that might have been a good idea, but that ship has sailed.
  • Students’ cameras must remain on during testing unless their WiFi does not work, and turning off their camera will preserve their ability to hear the test directions and communicate with the test administrator. In which case, tell the whole class that, what the heck, everyone can have their cameras off.
  • Students must be upright and not holding their devices above their heads while lying flat on their beds because we have standards, people.
  • When the testing environment is ready, and students have sharpened all of the number two pencils in their house for old time’s sake, say: “We are about to begin Remote Administration of the State Test Assessment. This test measures your school’s ability to teach you during a pandemic with insufficiently powerful devices. It also measures teachers who, by the by, have been given little in the way of district training while commanded to meet benchmarks and prepare students for testing as if everything was as hunky-dory as usual, even though your baby sister has a habit of shrieking and opening your door to bean you with one of the dog’s toys.”
  • Confirm that students are actually in the room by doing your seance impression that has cracked up your class all year: “Calling my ancestors and my students… are you there? Ouiji board, take me to my students…”
  • Next, say: “I will now give you a simple code to type into the box at the top of your screen, which will identify you to the state. You should not think about the fact that, according to the state, you are just a number. (We value you and your mental health.) If you need me to repeat it, raise your virtual Zoom hand and… who am I kidding? I have repeated everything I have said this year over Zoom, even though I have upgraded my personal WiFi here at the house at great expense to me while being told I should ‘get back to work’ by the general public on Facebook, which I didn’t even know until my significant other told me because I have been working 14-hour days since March 2020 and have not been on social media. So forget raising your hand; I’ll save you the effort and repeat each 15-digit letter and number code ten times, so you may complete this developmentally inappropriate task that has no bearing on the actual test and is taking valuable instructional time away from your education. But if the principal asks, remember I never said that.”
  • After students have typed in the code, say: "Ordinarily, I would tell you that I need to collect your personal phones, smartwatches, and other personal devices. Except this year, they are literally the only things keeping you tenuously tethered to the rest of the virtual class so let’s move on. Remember that googling often gets you the wrong answer, makes you horribly distracted, or sends you to a bad cover version of “Blackbird,” so cheating remotely is not in your best interest. Remember: your teachers will not get the results of your testing until well into next year after you have gotten the hang of the next grade. So your test results will not help the school know one iota more about your academic needs, despite the state insisting that testing is critical to know ‘where students are,’ and not that they must pay their testing contractors, and don’t want to feel guilty that they got nothing in return. We know where you are — you are in your bedroom, with your camera off so you can hear me, trying your damnedest during a year like no other when any adults in your household are attempting to hold it together while working full time in the kitchen, holding your baby sister in a front pack, and making sure that you are surviving third grade."
  • Help students complete the practice question. Mute yourself if you need to sob as they answer, because you covered that material, and they all had it three weeks ago. You will need the mute button again when the first student turns in the tests within 15 minutes of the testing window. This time, you will be crying for both of you.
  • Monitor student progress from your toolbar and announce when 30 minutes remain. Then tick down the last ten seconds like you are launching everyone to Mars. Hope that one of your students transcends this test and works for NASA on a cutting-edge project. Hope again that it is one of the students who fails this test so that it can be proven, once and for all, that high-stakes testing — especially during a pandemic — is not the answer.
  • Assist students with test submission after they check their answers. Give students an extended break while you collapse in a heap and write a note of gratitude to Big Pharma’s vaccines for saving you from doing this again next year.