Hundreds of thousands of California students this spring will not be taking the state’s annual Smarter Balanced standardized tests, an EdSource survey of the state’s largest districts shows.
The Smarter Balanced tests are aligned with the Common Core state standards for English language arts and math and are required by state and federal law each spring. Federal education officials in February told states that they must measure student progress this year, after waiving testing requirements in spring 2020 when Covid-19 caused school closures across the country.
Now, as California lags behind many states in reopening schools for in-person instruction, school districts are moving ahead with a wide range of plans to measure academic progress during the pandemic.