Perspective on Smarter Balanced Assessment Costs
09 Aug 2013
A couple weeks ago, we wrote about the budget implications for states participating in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), one of the two federally funded consortia creating assessments aligned to the Common Core. That post received some positive feedback, so we decided to do a similar analysis of the budgetary costs (or savings) for states participating in the other group, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.
Smarter Balanced will have two options for states: a basic and a complete system. The basic system covers all of the summative tests required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act and costs states $22.50 per student. According to the estimates released by Smarter Balanced, the basic system would reduce testing costs for two-thirds of its member states. The complete system, which includes summative, formative, and interim assessments, costs states $27.30 per student but would still reduce costs for more than half of the participating states.
For the purpose of this post, we will focus on the basic tests. As with PARCC, the savings, or costs in some cases, vary quite a bit based on the state. The table below uses Matthew Chingos’ November 2012 estimates for the Brookings Institution to illustrate how much each member state could save or lose under Smarter Balanced. It includes the latest member list from Smarter Balanced itself (although it excludes Connecticut, Iowa, South Carolina, U.S. Virgin Islands, West Virginia, and Wyoming, which do not have comparable testing cost figures available; and it also does not include any costs for states or schools to upgrade their technology infrastructure).
The table shows that, for 13 states, Smarter Balanced is a net savings, while seven states will likely see a rise in testing costs. If you add up all the savings and costs and look at all of