More Real Clear Education: California Waives Testing... and Accountability

Last week, after months of speculation, California finally earned a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education. No, not that waiver. Rather, a waiver that blesses the plan set in motion last fall when Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 484. This spring, California will retire its reading and math standardized tests a year early and administer field tests for SmarterBalanced, one of the two Common Core test consortia, instead. But there’s a catch: the results from the field test, unlike the tests they replaced, will not be disclosed publicly, or even to state leaders. The field test is meant to produce formal feedback for the consortium—on test design, technological capacity, item difficulty, and the like—not to produce data for state policymakers, district officials, educators, or parents.

There are many reasons to use the field test, including a desire to align curriculum and teaching to the Common Core. But at least some of those reasons have little to do with classroom instruction, and much more to do with accountability. Over at the newly launched RealClearEducation, I explore the ramifications of California’s waiver and ask whether there was a better way to transition to Common Core that balances instruction, transparency, and accountability:

By choosing to administer only the field test, California loses critical feedback on whether students are mastering the new (or any) standards. This argument is particularly specious given that California had other options available-options it could have pursued years ago, when it first signed on to the standards.

Other states reveal what could have been in California. Kentucky, New York, and Washington, D.C., for example, modified their existing tests so that they better reflected college and career readiness. Their updated tests provided teachers, administrators, and parents a sense of how well students were performing against the new standards, while also ensuring continuity in data and accountability. Rather than leap from one set of standards and tests to another, these states sought to smooth the transition over several years. Why didn't this approach appeal to California? Wouldn't modified tests, and the feedback they generated, have helped schools prepare for SmarterBalanced tests next year? Instead, California teachers and officials are left without any feedback at all.