Smarter Balanced Releases Practice Tests

Sean Cavanagh writes at the Education Week (5/30, Cavanagh) “Digital Education” blog that the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium has released “sets of online sample test questions for grades 3-8 and 11 in both English language arts and math,” noting that the consortium will offer the Common Core-aligned assessments to “participating states during the 2014-15 academic year.” Implementing the online tests “will be a major undertaking, and whether the online run-throughs will ease some of the recent agitation about the challenges of implementing those online tests remains to be seen.”

Noting that this test has been selected to replace the New England Common Assessment, New Hampshire Public Radio (5/30, Evans) reports that Jackie King with Smarter Balanced “calls the practice test a service for participating states that is ‘giving schools, parents, teachers an early look and an early chance to interact with the assessment almost two years before it will be operational in schools.’”