California will be a passenger, not a driver, among states moving forward with the next generation of standardized tests that will likely replace California Standards Tests and other states’ exams.
Without public discussion or explanation, state officials have chosen one of two consortia that are in the running for a piece of the $320 million that the Obama administration has set aside to design new tests. It will probably split the money between the two.
California joined 25 other states in the
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers or PARCC as a participating, not a governing state. That designation will give California flexibility – it can drop out or switch consortia with little notice – but little control over key decisions and the design of the tests. So if it doesn’t like the direction that the tests are taking, too bad.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s education advisers selected PARCC over the “home team”: the
SMARTER-Balanced Assessment Consortium which is being championed by Professor
Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues at the Stanford School of Education and is being managed by San Francisco-based
WestEd and its senior program director, Stanley Rabinowitz. SMARTER-Balanced enlisted 31 states.
A few states signed up as participating members of both consortia. California still can do so or switch consortia in coming years; there’s no penalty.
PARCC is being managed by
Achieve, Inc., a Washington-based non-profit that has been involved in establishing the
California Diploma Project. The Diploma Project
