Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Brown not backing away from decision to suspend state standardized tests | EdSource Today

Brown not backing away from decision to suspend state standardized tests | EdSource Today:



In remarks Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown defended the state’s decision to suspend state standardized tests this year and instead offer students a practice test in the Common Core standards that’s now being developed. And he gave no sign of steering away from a collision with the federal government over this issue.
“I feel that a test based on a different curriculum does not make a lot of sense,” he said during a news conference in Oakland. “We are investing $1 billion to adopt Common Core.”
The source of the conflict is Assembly Bill 484, which the Legislature approved last week and Brown has promised to sign. By requiring that every district capable of administering a computer-based test give students a Common Core field or practice test next spring, the bill will put California out of compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law. NCLB mandates annual testing in state standards in grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 in math and English language arts in order to measure schools’ and individual students’ performance. The field test will not produce results for federal accountability. Its purpose is to help the test developers create a valid assessment on the new standards in 2015, when California and other states would formally introduce it.
But Brown, who was at the Oakland School for the Arts, the charter school he founded, indicated the sky 

Never has school lunch meant so much for California education. Delivering significantly more money to schools based on the number of low-income children they serve is at the heart of the sweeping new K-12 finance system approved by the state Legislature in June. The new system defines “low income” as those ... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit the Edsource Today website for full links, oth