Cannot answer your “What am I missing?” question as I never did any testing with RWJS app. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that your issue is directly related to the cloned app database hydration issue, I described above.
My advice is to run the test for the original application (assuming that you typed in following a tutorial) and then compare it with the clone (app that is created by pushing the original into GitHub). Use DB browser for SQLite to inspect the dev.db database.
See my posts
Neither of them got any response from the community 
P.S. I am assuming that you are aware of the testing document (I have not yet learned it)