Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

When President Barack Obama declared that "unnecessary testing" is "consuming too much instructional time" and creating "undue stress for educators and students," it was some other sign that the ascendant strategy over the past 15 yearsto apply standardized tests to hold children and schools "answerable" in education reform may accept reached a tipping indicate.

California is on class to have a major impact on reshaping the national discourse – and practise – on this effect. The state is in the middle of devising a new accountability system, a massive and complex undertaking in a state as large and diverse as California, that is intended to go far beyond a narrow preoccupation with test scores.

President Obama's contempo anti-testing pronouncements are especially significant because using exam scores every bit the ascendant measure of school and student progress has been cardinal to his K-12 education reform agenda.

Arne Duncan, Obama'south parting secretary of education, acknowledged the administration's contribution to the problem. "It'south important that nosotros're all honest with ourselves," he said. "At the federal, state and local level, nosotros have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We tin and will work with states, districts and educators to assist solve it."

By contrast, Gov. Jerry Brown has been consistent in challenging the part of testing – and has clashed repeatedly with the Obama administration on this effect, even before he returned to the governorship in 2011.

Dark-brown likes to recount what was apparently a seminal experience while he was a student at St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco, when the only question on an exam asked students to requite their impressions of a green leaf.

"Still, as I walk by trees, I keep saying, 'How'south my impression coming? Tin I feel anything? Am I dead inside?' So, this was a very powerful question that has haunted me for 50 years."

The point, Chocolate-brown says, is that "yous can't put that on a standardized test. There are of import educational encounters that can't be captured by tests."

State instruction leaders have echoed Brown's deep skepticism about the excessive use of standardized tests.

"We must always be mindful that fourth dimension spent testing generally comes at the expense of time our students would otherwise accept spent gaining the very knowledge and skills that are the goal of education," State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson declared three years ago in a report to the state Legislature on Transitioning California to a Futurity Assessment Organization.

Torlakson noted that many countries that "atomic number 82 the globe in accomplishment place little or no accent on standardized testing." When they practise test, he said, "they utilize more than open-minded measures, sparingly and strategically, and oft sample students rather than testing every child." He suggested that if the federal government weren't requiring it, California would do fifty-fifty less testing than it is currently doing.

Other prominent California education leaders take also been at the forefront of questioning how tests take been used  in the national teaching reform agenda. Most significantly they include Linda Darling-Hammond, the president of the Learning Policy Institute, who is likewise Brown's appointee as chair of the California Teacher Credentialing Committee. Two-and-a-one-half years ago Darling-Hammond took aim at what she calls the "test and punish" approach to accountability. "Without major changes, nosotros will, indeed, exist testing our nation to death," she wrote.

But California has done more talk about the issue.

The state has suspended – and is because permanently abolishing – the Academic Performance Index, which for 15 years ranked schools based almost entirely on the examination score results of students.

This past summer the Legislature suspended the California High School Exit Exam, at least for the adjacent iii years – and has even told districts to award diplomas retroactively to students who did not pass the exam and were denied a diploma because of information technology during the decade the exit examination was in place.

Also gone, for now, are standardized tests in 2nd-, 9th- and 10th-form math and English language language arts, end-of-class math tests in Algebra I, Algebra II, geometry, general math and integrated math; all history tests; and cease-of-form tests in high school in biology, chemistry, physics and integrated scientific discipline.

One unresolved question is whether California volition permanently eliminate these end-of-course standardized tests permanently or whether they will be replaced with ones that are aligned with the Common Core standards.

For now at to the lowest degree, the merely standardized tests left that are administered by the state are the Smarter Balanced tests in math and English language arts, which all students in 3rd through 8th class and 11th grade are expected to take. Students yet take a scientific discipline test in 5th, 8th and 10th course considering they are required to practise so under the No Kid Left Behind law. (Students with special needs have a diverseness of tests designed to have into account their specific disabilities)

What makes what is happening in California especially interesting is that the land is not reflexively against tests in full general. In fact, California is a leading backer of the Smarter Balanced assessments aligned with the Common Core – the very same tests that accept fueled vehement anti-testing sentiments in some other states, most notably in New York.

That'southward because potent backers similar Darling-Hammond have argued that the assessments are significantly improved compared to the onetime multiple-choice tests, measure deeper learning skills, and have the potential to actually drive classroom educational activity, non but be used to measure how well or how desperately schools or students are doing. California has likewise prevented Smarter Balanced from becoming a lightning rod for opposition by resisting pressures from the Obama administration to use test scores to evaluate teacher effectiveness.

And so rather than being against all tests, the state is moving toward establishing a much broader accountability system, of which tests – improved ones, according to proponents – will contain just one part. In California, the new accountability arrangement will be based on "multiple measures" rooted in viii "priority areas" established past the land in the 2022 Local Control Funding Formula constabulary championed by Brown.

In add-on to scores on the Smarter Balanced tests, these could include measures of middle and high schoolhouse dropout rates, attendance rates, absenteeism and graduation rates, parent engagement, and "school climate," as revealed in interruption and expulsion rates and student surveys.

Furthest along in developing a new "multiple mensurate" accountability system are the six Core districts, which are  developing a School Quality Improvement Index that could inform what volition happen in the land and nationally on this hugely complex job.

Past March 2016, Torlakson must present his recommendations for a comprehensive assessment system to the State Lath of Didactics, and so the next few months will exist crucial in shaping where California equally a whole will finish upward on this issue.

Torlakson is beingness advised past an "Accountability and Continuous Improvement Task Strength" which is mandated by land and is co-chaired by Eric Heins, the president of the California Teachers Association, and Wes Smith, executive managing director of the Association of California Schoolhouse Administrators. The 29 fellow member task strength includes many of the state'southward most prominent educational activity leaders.

All this is taking place as Congress, after years of gridlock on the issue, appears to be moving to replace the No Child Left Behind police with ane that volition motility the nation distinctly in the direction California is already going. As task force member David Plank, executive manager for Policy Analysis for California Education, said, "There is general understanding that California is in a position to pb, and to gear up a new course not only for the land but for accountability in general."

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