Duncan grants relief to some schools facing two sets of standardized tests next year - by John Fensterwald
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has just made the challenge of transitioning to the Common Core standards a less burdensome for about one in five schools in California.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan during a visit this spring to Fremont High in Sunnyvale. Photo by Kathryn Baron.
Duncan on Tuesday announced that schools that do the field test for the new Common Core assessment next spring can get a one-year waiver from also giving current state standardized tests required by federal law.
For California, that means those schools can turn next year to teaching the new standards exclusively without focusing on the California Standards Tests in English language arts and math – and the weeks of test prep that many students and teachers must endure preceding the paper-based, multiple-choice assessment. The schools that take the field test would use the CST results from the previous year for accountability under the No Child Left Behind law. The waiver could complicate the state’s ability to compute a school’s and district’s Academic Performance Index (API) score.
California and 44 other states that have adopted the Common Core standards have agreed to begin giving the new tests in spring 2015. California has a leading role in shaping the tests for Smarter Balanced, one of two consortia of states creating the federally
