Buying iPads, Common Core Standards, and Computer-Based Testing
The tsunami of computer-based testing for public school students is on the horizon. Get ready.
For adults, computer-based testing has been around for decades. For example, I have taken and re-taken the California online test to renew my driver’s license twice in the past decade. To get certified to drive as a volunteer driver for Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, I had to read gobs of material about hospital policies and federal regulations on confidentiality before taking a series of computer-based tests. To obtain approval from Stanford University for a research project of which I am the principal investigator and where I would interview teachers and observe classrooms, I had to read online a massive amount of material on university regulations about consent of subjects to participate, confidentiality, and handling of information gotten from interviews and classroom observations. And again, I took online tests that I had to pass in