Fountain Hills Unified School District students will be taking standardized tests from the end of March through most of April. The assessment scheduling is different at each school based on the state’s differing testing windows.

The ACT college admissions test is the newly adopted state standardized test for Arizona 11th grade students. All high school juniors are required to test on campus on Tuesday, April 5. They will have from 7:30 to 11:45 a.m. to take the ACT, and students receive their scores next year and will be able to use them in college admissions.

A week later, on Tuesday, April 12, and Thursday, April 14, the ninth grade students will take the ACT Aspire assessment, and 11th grade students will take the AzSci assessment. Testing will be from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. each testing day, and all students will be on a late start schedule with classes starting at 11:30 a.m. and ending at 2:20 p.m. Students will attend periods one, two and three on Tuesday, and attend periods four, five and six on Thursday.

Testing at the middle school began earlier this week. Fifth and eighth grade students took the AzSci assessment on Monday, March 28, but all middle school students will take the Arizona Academic Standards Assessment (AASA) from Monday, April 11, to Thursday, April 14. The AASA was formerly known as AzM2. Students will be tested on writing on the April 11, math parts one and two on April 12-13, and finally reading on April 14.

Only third grade students at McDowell Mountain Elementary will be taking the AASA this year, and the exams will be spread out over two weeks in April. Third graders will take the writing test on Thursday, April 7, an oral reading fluency test on April 12, reading on April 14, math part one on April 19 and math part two on April 21.

FHUSD uses tools like IXL Diagnostic and Personalized Learning Plans, STAR Reading Assessments, and Beyond Textbooks’ Formative and Benchmark assessments to constantly monitor the understanding of current standards being taught. This upcoming round of testing will be the first standardized testing in FHUSD since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and the results may shed light on the state of the district since then.