With federal approval finally in hand to give a Common Core-aligned practice test this spring, the State Board of Education took the inevitable next step this week. It suspended the Academic Performance Index, the chief measure of schools’ academic growth or progress, for this year and next.A reconstituted API will resume in 2015-16, incorporating results from the Smarter Balanced assessments, the new Common Core tests for English language arts and math that will be given to students in grades 3 to 8 and grade 11.
California is doing a Smarter Balanced field or practice test this year and formally launching the operational Smarter Balanced test in spring 2015. That test will provide the base API. Results from the 2016 test will provide the growth API, a basis for comparison and calculation of a school’s three-digit API number.
California is in the first stages of transforming its school and district accountability systems,including the creation of new standardized tests in nearly every subject. It is also rethinking the components of the API itself.
Last year, with the passage of AB 484, the state Legislature terminated the administration of nearly all California Standards Tests, the tests measuring students’ knowledge of the old state academic standards, and authorized the transition to new higher quality tests in all subjects, starting with Smarter Balanced assessments in English language arts and math. (Existing science tests in