This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

California Student Assessments

I attended two presentations both of which discussed student assessments:  Education Update with Dr. Michael Kirst on 9/28 and Evaluating Education Reform with Dr. Diane Ravitch on 9/30. 

 

STAR Testing is Dead

Proclaimed Dr. Michael Kirst, President of the California Board of Education.  Just when you started to understand the API score, it no longer matters.  The bill to end STAR testing, which produced school API scores, has passed through to the Governor’s desk for signing and he will sign it asserted Dr. Kirst.  California had been the benchmark of “cheap testing” with fill in the bubble multiple-choice tests that did not count to students.  The assessments were unrelated to course work, grades, graduation, or college entry.  

Find out what's happening in Los Altoswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

 

Smarter Balanced Assessments

This next year will be a rebuilding year for California assessments.  The new testing process, funded by the Federal Government, is Smarter Balanced.  This assessment is aligned with the new Common Core educational standards and provides a computer-adapted assessment.  The adaptive assessment will more accurately measure where students actually are.  In Palo Alto and Los Altos, we have many students who “blow out” the current assessments at the top end.  Not so with Smarter Balanced.  Dr. Kirst claimed that the new assessment will adjust questions to measure top end achievement.

Find out what's happening in Los Altoswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

  

Dr. Kirst said that California will most likely have a “Beta Test” of the new assessment process in the Spring of 2014.  These scores will be used only to test the new assessment process, not to measure the students.  This issue comes before the Legislature in January, 2014.

  

New Assessments to Finally Count 

Claiming a “Seed Change” in education, Dr. Kirst said that the move to Common Core standards and computer-adapted assessments will matter towards college entry.  The SAT, ACT and UC System are revamping their own requirements to align with the new Common Core standards and computer-adapted assessments.  He expects to see tighter alignment of course work in high school with college entry requirements and college course credits for high school classes.

  

How Do We Rank vs Other Top Performers?

After the release of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)  results in 2010, with USA ranked as #32, there has been grumbling by the press that students in the USA are not keeping up with other top performing international students such as top ranked Shanghai, China.  Dr. Diane Ravitch pointed out that China, as a country, did not participate in the PISA assessments – only the Shanghai Province.  Furthermore, students in the USA living in areas with less than 10% poverty, like Palo Alto and Los Altos, had scores that were equal to those of Shanghai and significantly better than high-scoring Finland, Republic of Korea, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia.   While California as a whole is not a top performer, Massachusetts did score among the top performers in the world.  And, Diane Ravitch pointed out that the other top performers on PISA had no significant number of students living in poverty – the number one factor correlated to poor student performance. 

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?