Smarter Balanced is Looking for a Pal in ACT or SAT for High School Assessment
On February 27, 2017, the University of California at Los Angeles, on behalf of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a “college admission collaboration” in which SBAC “wishes to engage in collaborative work with developers of college admissions tests”– in other words, SBAC is looking to beef up its high-school assessment game by befriending the likes of SAT or ACT.
In the parlance of *choice,* SBAC is giving itself a voucher to *escape its consortium zip code.* Of course, that does not mean that either SAT or ACT will choose to hitch its lucrative college admin wagon to the disadvantaged SBAC star.
ACT and SAT do not need SBAC. Thus, theirs is the upper-hand choice to refuse the SBAC voucher.
Complete details are in this RFP statement of work. Below are excerpts in which SBAC tries to present its dilemma regarding garnering the high school assessment market as “promising,” even though those high school students might not see any value in the benefits of a SBAC assessment:
The Smarter Balanced Assessment System was developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium currently UCLA GSEIS-Smarter Balanced (“Smarter Balanced” or “the Consortium”) in response to the 2010 Race to the Top Assessment Program. Current Smarter Balanced members include 15 states, one territory, and the Bureau of Indian Education.Smarter Balanced assessment development began with in-depth discussions among many groups of educators, content experts, and researchers of the high level content identified in the Common Core State Standards (“CCSS”). …The resulting Smarter Balanced Assessment System includes interim assessments, formative assessment resources, and summative assessments in ELA/literacy and mathematics for students in grades 3-8 and high school. …Given this promising outlook for providing relevant and useful information to postsecondary institutions, Smarter Balanced members have engaged inSmarter Balanced is Looking for a Pal in ACT or SAT for High School Assessment | deutsch29:
