Gina Dalma

Gina Dalma
March 1, 2015

This jump, all California'southward students in grades iii-8 and in grade 11 will take brand new tests. These finish-of-twelvemonth standardized tests – known in the field as Smarter Balanced assessments – will exist administered as part of a new, more comprehensive state accountability system to measure student progress toward college and career readiness.

This arrangement is based on the new Common Cadre State Standards for English language linguistic communication arts and mathematics adopted past California along with 42 other states.

Here is the tough function: For students and parents, the increased rigor of the new standards will likely mean that fewer students volition score "skilful" on these new tests than on the ones they have been taking for the past 15 years.

Merely lower scores on the tests should non exist an indictment of the new Common Cadre standards. Rather, they should underscore the difficult work that will be needed to ensure our students become disquisitional thinkers who will not need remedial courses in higher before they can get started on higher-level work. Let'south recollect that exam scores were besides much lower when the previous standardized tests – the California Standards Tests – were first introduced.

The new tests, known as the Smarter Balanced assessments, will be significantly dissimilar from what our students are used to – and much more interesting than the tests students take been taking until now. Standardized chimera tests will be replaced past tests that allow students to show much more precisely what they know and are able to do.

Our students volition be challenged with assessments that measure how securely they are able to sympathize the concepts and, more than importantly, employ their knowledge to solve real-life problems.

The challenge does not finish in that location. Educators and district and state administrators have their off-white share of challenges too. If we are to utilise these assessments for student growth, and not just accountability, educators will demand to design and implement systems to apply the results to improve educational activity and learning at every school.

The state's push to bulldoze more determination-making to a local district level will hateful, among other things, that district administrators volition have to design new ways of reporting on multiple measures based on the state'south priority areas. These include bookish proficiency, student engagement, school climate and parental involvement. That means no elementary single number will exist used to draw the entirety of a school's performance, every bit was the example with the Academic Performance Alphabetize, which is at present undergoing revision.

Finally, state administrators will have to design and invest in data systems to collect student and schoolhouse data from the more than 1,000 districts in our land. And alongside county offices of education, state administrators should provide tools and resources to support each schoolhouse's process of continuous improvement.

None of the challenges higher up will be elementary to solve. With a lot of policy and systems yet to exist adult, it will have time for students, teachers, principals, superintendents and state officials to conform to this new globe.

Nevertheless, existent magic is happening in thousands of classrooms all over our land every bit a event of the new Common Core standards. These new standards, along with teachers prepared to implement them and the assessments to come across whether students are benefiting from them, hold real promise for offer our kids an didactics that will prepare them for higher, careers and life.

If nosotros, every bit a state, fail to build public will for these changes, if we fail to accost the challenges and investment needs at every level of the school organization, if we shy away from more rigorous standards and assessments, nosotros volition lose the opportunity to offer a earth-grade education to all of our kids.

We simply cannot afford that. Our students are worth anybody working harder – and together – to provide them a world-class teaching.

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Gina D. Dalma is the senior program officer at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and leads the Silicon Valley Mutual Core Initiative.

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