Smarter Balanced, the organization that is designing the Common Core assessments for California and two dozen other member states, released sample test items for parents and teachers last week. As expected, they’re anything but your father’s multiple choice.
If all goes on schedule, beginning in 2014-15 students will use computers to take tests designed to measure their performance on the Common Core standards that California and most states adopted two years ago. The new tests will involve watching videos, using cursors to draw or move items and writing reports after doing research online.
Advocates of Common Core have argued that the standards are challenging not just because of what students must know but also how they must demonstrate that they know it. The questions certainly reflect that challenge.
“With Common Core, we are moving to assessments that reflect a deeper level of understanding as well as a different set of skill sets,” said Michelle Steagall, chief academic officer of CORE (California Office to Reform Education), the nonprofit organization that eight California districts
Desert Trails parents choose charter operator, next step in ‘parent trigger’ - by John Fensterwald
With a low voter turnout Thursday, parents exercising a “parent trigger” option at the Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto selected a charter operator in nearby Hesperia to run their school starting next August. The selection of LaVerne Elementary Preparatory Academy, a small K-8 charter with an API of 911 – more than 200 points above Desert Trails’ score of 699 this year – marked...