Picture this: You are sitting at your desk, surrounded by other students, all of them blankly staring at their computer. You look up at the clock, and time is crawling along. You sigh and look at your computer to see a passage about a paragraph long, with a fill in the blank question next to it. Knowing how important this test is, you reread the paragraph many times. You hesitantly hit what you think is the answer and look at the next question. This goes on for another half hour or so, until the screen pops up with the number 954.

This is what happens three times a year to the average middle school student. The SRI, short for Scholastic Reading Inventory, is a reading test the determines your ability to comprehend reading. Many students hate this test to their core, because it’s so stressful. Avery, an eighth grade student, says that “It’s really boring and stressful. I wish we didn’t have to take it.”  Schools tends to put a lot of pressure is put on students to increase their lexile, which is the unit they grade you with.

The format of the test is also something students hate. Once the test starts, you are put on a screen with a paragraph and a question to the side. Students are supposed to read the text and answer the question. It’s supposed to be a comprehension test, but many people take it as a vocabulary test. Even if you understand the article perfectly, if you don’t know the words that you can answer with, you’re in trouble. One student says that the vocabulary is stuff that even adults don’t know. She also said” Sometimes I thinks the computer just picks random words and throws them in as answers.”

However, an article from the Dilllon school district in South Carolina states that “The options for all of the items in the SRI were written to be at or below the reading level of the passage.” It also says “The level of reading of the statement and the four options is controlled to ensure that their difficulty level is easier than the most difficult word in the passage.” To put it simply, the other argument is that the vocab is at or below the level of the passage, so if you are having trouble with the vocab, the article is too hard.

Your lexile level determines a lot of things, such as what class you are put in, grouping, what book you’re assigned, and more. Teachers determine if you have a high lexile by looking at a chart that Scholastic Reading puts out. This is what is looks like:

So if you’re in sixth grade and you have a lexile of 1174, you are most likely going to be put in an advanced group, especially if you do well on the Istep. If you have a lexile of 793 in sixth grade, chances are you won’t be an advanced group. Many students wish to get into advanced classes because they either find the normal ones boring or they want to learn more. This warrants extra stress.

Another thing is that the SRI doesn’t account for content of the books, just comprehension level. This means that there are books that could be a seventh grade lexile, but have things that may be too mature for a seventh grader, or things that a parent may not want them to read.

There is also the factor of whether or not the test is fair. For example, there are many smart students who are good readers and have good grades, but they have ADD/ADHD or just have trouble focusing. This is a kind of test where you sit in one spot for an hour and answer boring questions. This makes it very difficult for even the most focused person to stay on track, let alone someone who has trouble focusing regularly. One student who has ADD said that she finds the SRI really “unfair for people with trouble focusing. Those people, even though a lot of them are super smart, get put in lower categories because they couldn’t focus.”

On the other hand, however, this method of deciding reading levels has been thoroughly researched by people from all across the USA, and has been proven to work. There are over 35,000 books that have been assigned Lexile levels and new books are added each month. And the reason students take the test in the first place is to find books that are your reading level. It helps you know that you shouldn’t read “Legend of the Sleepy Hollow” just yet, because it would be too difficult.

And some students, like Abby, don’t really care. She says, “I don’t really care because no one checks out books that are their lexile level anyway.” Another student says, “I mean, I find it boring, but I don’t care. It doesn’t stress me out or anything.”

Many students hate the SRI. A few students think that taking it is fun, if a little stressful. And others think it’s a necessary evil. There are many different opinions on this test, and no two views are the same.  What do you think? Is it necessary, or unfair to make kids endure this test?