[Amelia]

My guess, especially considering the type lettering and the palm tree in the 2nd sign, is that it's a take-off on the TV series "Survivor" and that someone decided to portray the test as an adventure with that theme. When were the pictures taken? Was it a couple of years ago when you couldn't go anywhere without hearing something about "Survivor"?

I've never seen signs that said "Survive the test". We do encourage students to eat a good breakfast & get plenty of sleep the night before.

The students at the school where I teach have 2 kinds of standardized tests: the state graduation tests, and state-developed & graded end-of-course-tests. If they don't pass the former, they don't get a diploma (with certain limited exceptions). By law in our state, the latter are counted as 15% of the semester grade. So, for both tests, it's in the student's interest to do well.

Since NCLB, our school is graded on student performance on the tests and also on how many students are present for the test (apparently some schools used to encourage lower-performing students to stay home on test day to make their average scores higher).

[BJungNan]

My guess, especially considering the type lettering and the palm tree in the 2nd sign, is that it's a take-off on the TV series "Survivor" and that someone decided to portray the test as an adventure with that theme. When were the pictures taken? Was it a couple of years ago when you couldn't go anywhere without hearing something about "Survivor"?

Now that is an interesting guess. Can't say it is wrong. I just had not made that connection. Sure would be nice if that is what is was. Otherwise to me it sounds, well, less than inspiring.

The pictures are recent. The posters are hanging on the cafeteria wall as I write this.