State awards Common Core test contract
September 3, 2014 | By John Fensterwald | No Comments
With the State Board of Education’s approval, California became the ninth state Wednesday to award a contract to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium for the standardized tests in the Common Core State Standards that students will take next spring.
An additional nine states are expected to sign on, making 18 states committed to give the Smarter Balanced version of the standardized tests in math and English language arts, said Joe Willhoft, Smarter Balanced’s executive director. An additional four states – Michigan, North Carolina, Iowa and Wyoming – have been affiliated with the consortium but are embroiled in political and funding disputes over Common Core and have put off signing on until at least next year, he said.
SOURCE: STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION WEBCAST
Joe Willhoft, executive director of Smarter Balanced, discusses the Common Core tests with the State Board of Education on Wednesday.
The state board’s unanimous consent was expected. California has been an influential governing member of Smarter Balanced, one of two groups of states that developed separate versions of Common Core tests over four years with a $350 million federal grant. California has also become Smarter Balanced’s home; the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards And Student Testing (CRESST), based at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, took over the consortium’s administration on July 1.
With federal money running out this year, Smarter Balanced is now self-funded. California will pay $9.55 million annually for three years for a total of $28.65 million. That works out to $9.55 per student up to the first 1 million students, with no additional charge for the remaining 2.6 million California students who will take the online English language arts and math tests for grades 3 through 8 and grade 11.
The Smarter Balanced contract doesn’t include the cost of scoring, administering and reporting results of the assessments – the company ETS will do that for an estimated $17.75 per student, according to State awards Common Core test contract | EdSource: