U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has but made the challenge of transitioning to the Common Core standards less burdensome for about one in five schools in California.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan during a visit this spring to Fremont High in Sunnyvale. Photo by Kathryn Baron.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan during a visit this leap to Fremont Loftier in Sunnyvale. Photograph by Kathryn Baron.

Duncan on Tuesday announced that schools that do the field examination for the new Common Core assessment adjacent jump can get a one-twelvemonth waiver from also giving current state standardized tests required by federal law.

For California, that means those schools can turn next year to didactics the new standards exclusively without focusing on the California Standards Tests in English language language arts and math – and the weeks of test prep that many students and teachers must endure preceding the newspaper-based, multiple-pick assessment. The schools that take the field test would use the CST results from the previous year for accountability under the No Child Left Behind law. The waiver could complicate the state's ability to compute a school's and district's Academic Performance Index (API) score.

California and 44 other states that have adopted the Common Core standards take agreed to brainstorm giving the new tests in spring 2015. California has a leading role in shaping the tests for Smarter Balanced, ane of two consortia of states creating the federally funded tests in math and English linguistic communication arts.

This by spring, 1 one thousand thousand students in 26 states, including 200,000 students in 1,400 districts and charter schools in California, took the Smarter Balanced airplane pilot examination, whose purpose was to test the validity of the new questions. Side by side jump, double that number – 20 percent of students  in California and other Smarter Balanced states – will participate in the more all-encompassing field test, a dry run of the total assessment they'll take a year after, according to Deputy Superintendent Deb Sigman, who also serves on the executive committee of Smarter Balanced. Criteria for school participation in the field test aren't yet available, Sigman said.

This volition give many schools their showtime try at a computer-based examination; they'll also get some limited test results dorsum. One purpose of the field test is for Smarter Balanced's designers to make up one's mind score results for classifying students at proficient and other levels of achievement.

A capacity issue

It's unclear how many schools in California have the number of computers and the Cyberspace capability to administer the field test. Fewer than half of districts responded to a Smarter Counterbalanced survey last year gauging their technological capability.

Evan Marwell, CEO of Education State highway, a San Francisco nonprofit that is working on the schools' technology gaps, estimates that 27 pct of the nation's schools have the bandwidth to handle the blazon of assessment that Smarter Counterbalanced is designing and twice that percentage tin handle a slimmed-down version – basically moving multiple-choice questions to the computer, without the complex, media-rich questions that the consortium is designing.

Duncan's willingness to eliminate double-testing next year for grades 3 through 8 and course 11 will provide relief for students facing the prospect of two tests of vi to eight hours each – maybe longer for Smarter Balanced – and for teachers faced with teaching two sets of standards, i state and one national. While there is considerable overlap, the Mutual Core standards, with an accent on conceptual thinking, will create additional challenges for teachers.

In a argument, Country Superintendent of Public Educational activity Tom Torlakson praised Duncan's position on testing flexibility as "good news for students and schools as we brand the transition to new assessments based on California'due south career- and college-ready standards. Double-testing would have taken upwardly time students need to learn, and could have made our motility to new assessments even more challenging."

Torlakson has already proposed suspending most state standardized tests non required by NCLB starting next twelvemonth and to employ the savings in test administration to pattern new subject area-matter tests aligned to Mutual Cadre standards, starting with Algebra and Geometry.

Reprieve on teacher evaluations

In the aforementioned argument, Duncan also announced that the federal authorities would push back past a year, to 2016-17, the requirement that growth in pupil test scores be used as a component in teacher and principal evaluations. Teachers and education advocates had complained that it would be problematic, if not unfair, to judge them by the initial yr's scores nether a new organisation of Common Core standards and tests. Duncan's extension would permit compiling three years of pupil results before use in evaluations.

California won't exist affected immediately, since the requirement applies to states that take received either a Race to the Top grant or a waiver from sanctions of No Kid Left Behind. Duncan rejected California's waiver application terminal year, and the earliest the state could utilise once again would be for the 2014-fifteen year. The extension could bear upon the nine California districts that are seeking a district waiver from NCLB through their organization, the California Office to Reform Education. They've agreed to use scores of standardized tests as a minor element in teacher evaluations. Core expects to hear within the side by side few weeks whether its waiver awarding, taking issue this autumn, is approved.

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