Governor signs new education assessment bill, suspending STAR

Out with the old and in with the new is what Governor Jerry Brown’s signature on Assembly Bill 484 signified Wednesday, as California’s public education system will recognize a new way to assess its students’ academic progress.
The old: Standardized Testing and Reporting assessments, known as STAR, are now suspended for the current school year as teachers and schools transition to the new standards. STAR assessments include the state’s Academic Performance Index scores given to schools to measure student achievement.
The new: California Measurement of Academic Performance and Progress assessments are considered “modern, computer-based assessments that will measure student readiness for the challenges of college and the workplace.” MAPP assessments will be aligned with the Common Core State Standards – a set of new educational guidelines adopted by California in 2010 – and be fully implemented by the 2014-15 school year.
“Faced with the choice of preparing California’s children for the future of continuing to cling to outdated policies of the past, our state’s leaders worked together and made the right choice for our students,” State Superintendent Tom Torlakson said. “The new assessments represent a challenge for our education system – but a lifetime of opportunity for students. As a teacher, I’m thrilled to see our state and our schools once again leading the way.”
Locally, traditional public schools have been in a heated battle with a pair of charter school organizations, Navigator Schools and Rocketship Education, that are attempting to open their own elementary schools within the Morgan Hill Unified School District boundaries. A disparity in API scores, especially in certain ethnic subgroups, has been a strong topic of debate among educators, administrators and residents from both sides.
However, charters and traditional schools will soon have students measured by the new, computer-based assessments, which allow “for a much broader range of test questions than the multiple-choice exams given under STAR” and “are expected to emphasize critical thinking, reasoning and problem solving.” The assessment – and new Common Core educational guidelines – are aimed at “the kind of teaching and learning needed to prepare all students for the demands of college and modern workplace.”
Part of the assessment system, developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter), will also be computer adaptive, so that a student’s prior responses affect the difficulty of subsequent questions, allowing a far more precise measurement of student skills and knowledge than the former tests.
For the current school year, AB 484 requires districts to administer field tests of the Smarter Balanced assessments – with half of the students taking math and the other half taking English-language arts. Field tests serve as “tests of the tests” allowing experts to discern the accuracy and reliability of individual test questions before finalizing the assessments for full-scale use. As such, no field test scores will be produced or reported during the field test year.
California is one of 45 states, along with the District of Columbia and three territories that formally have adopted the CCSS for mathematics and English Language Arts. The proposed revisions to align the state’s assessment system with the new standards adopted by the State Board of Education in 2010 mark a key milestone in implementing the CCSS.
The Smarter Balanced assessments were designed to meet federal- and state-level accountability requirements and provide teachers and parents with timely and accurate information to measure student performance and progress.
“I’ve said from the beginning, California needs tests that measure how ready our students are for the challenges of a changing world,” Torlakson said. “Today, we have taken a huge step in that direction by creating an assessment system focused on improving teaching and learning and by sending a clear signal about our commitment to this urgent work.”