The Smarter Balanced Assessment is aligned with the Common Core Standards and seeks to measure students progress toward college and career readiness. It challenges students in grades 3-8 and 11 to not only respond to multiple choice tests but also assesses their critical thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills. It accomplishes this through the computer adaptive assessment consisting of a bank of questions that sequence and filter based on students previously answered questions.
Overall, I think the idea behind this test is stellar. Students should be tested on the critical thinking and problem solving skills rather than just their memorization of facts and concepts. Moreover, it's beneficial to have a test that adapts to students individual levels of understand based on how they answer questions.
Just like any other test, this one has it's flaws. There is still not a concrete solution for ELL students and it is still impossible to capture every student's unique learning needs with one test. Another problem for schools is the time-consuming nature of this test, as they may need to rotate groups of students through multiple shifts of computer testing. However, it is encouraging to see that we are working to remedy these issues and will continue to develop ideas for standardized tests that can capture the best picture of our students' progress.
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