California students will take far fewer standardized tests for the next few years. Credit: iStockphoto.com
Like high school graduates who pause to figure out what to do in life, most standardized tests in California and the Academic Performance Index that measures them are about to take a gap year – or longer – to give the State Board of Education and legislators time to decide what comes next now that the state’s current testing program is ending.
Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that effectively terminates the California Standards Tests, or CSTs, and other assessments that formed the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting program, known as STAR, for the past 15 years.
Assembly Bill 484 gives the state two years to create a master plan for future state tests and an unspecified period after that to implement the plan. And it gives the State Board the power for the next two years to suspend the Academic Performance Index, the three-digit number that is based on the test results and that defines schools’ and districts’ performance.
It will be years before it’s clear what standardized tests in California will look like. What follows are some of the questions raised by AB 484, some answers