Credit: Berkeley Unified School Commune

Students in California preparing for the Smarter Counterbalanced tests.

Credit: Berkeley Unified School Commune

Students in California preparing for the Smarter Balanced tests.

Update: The article was updated on Dec. 23 with a reference to an article in Educational activity Calendar week and the state's response to it, with supporting information.

Sizable numbers of juniors at a handful of high schools declined to accept new Smarter Balanced tests in the Common Cadre standards, simply the overall statewide participation rate for the tests was 97 percent, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson appear Tuesday. That exceeded the 95 pct rate needed to satisfy federal testing requirements and avoid possible state penalties this twelvemonth nether the federal No Kid Left Backside Act.

"These numbers tell an important story," Torlakson said in a statement. "They reflect stiff support for our new standards amidst parents, teachers, students, and business concern and community leaders."

In an commodity published Wednesday, Education Week reported that California was one of a dozen states that had failed to meet the 95 percent threshold. In an undated letter to Torlakson and State Board of Education President Michael Kirst, the U.S. Department of Education asked the state how it plans to correct the trouble in 2015-16.

State Department of Education spokesman Peter Tira responded in an e-mail that federal officials incorrectly used preliminary data; the land informed them of this in a Dec. 4 letter that stated that all but 21 districts, comprising less than 0.three percentage of the state'southward students, had met the 95 percent participation rate. (Click here for a list of the districts.)

The process of opting out of state standardized tests is easier in California than in most states; parents need only to sign and return a form. EdSource found last spring that in at to the lowest degree 4 high schools, in the affluent communities of Palo Alto, Palos Verdes and Calabasas, one-half of juniors opted out. Students interviewed said they wanted to study for the SAT and Act exams – which were given well-nigh the same fourth dimension – instead.

Smarter Balanced tests were given to students in math and English language language arts in grades 3-eight and grade xi in high school. The scores don't count on a student'south tape but they will exist used as a measure of a school's academic performance. Nonetheless, many loftier school juniors did had have an incentive to accept the tests. Students applying to the California State Academy who scored high enough were exempt from having to take remedial classes as freshmen. The 11th class participation charge per unit was 90 percent, which includes absentees equally well equally opt-outs.

To count every bit participating in the test, a student had merely to sign on to a computer for the multiple-choice and the more circuitous operation task portions of the test in both English language arts and math. Still, to receive a score, students had to answer a minimum number of questions; the state did not cite that number in the information it released Tuesday.

Doug McRae, a retired educational testing company executive in charge of design and development of Thou-12 tests who lives in Monterey, criticized the Smarter Counterbalanced's definition of  participation as "a very depression bar" that schools tin can manipulate. "The traditional specification for participation includes answering a minimal number of test questions," he said.

The 97 percent participation charge per unit included students who took the field test of the California Alternative Assessment, which was given to students with cerebral disabilities excluding them from taking the Smarter Balanced test.

Torlakson said that the loftier participation rates showed that the country and local districts were effective in upgrading Cyberspace and computing capability at California schools. Only most 900 of the iii.2 million students who took the tests used paper and pencil because of inadequate technology.

The Every Pupil Succeeds Human activity, which Congress passed this month to supervene upon No Child Left Behind side by side year, also will crave that 95 pct of students take standardized tests used to measure schoolhouse performance. However, unlike NCLB, states will determine what penalties to apply to schools whose participation rates fall brusk of the minimum.

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