Under Common Core, the STAR test in California will be replaced with a new, online assessment developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, or Smarter Balanced. Along with the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers (PARCC), Smarter Balanced develops assessments that are in alignment with the Common Core. States can choose to join either consortia—California chose Smarter Balanced. This new assessment is known as the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP).
Additionally, unlike the current STAR test, which tests students from second grade to eleventh grade, the CAASPP will test students from third grade to eighth grade and students in eleventh grade. This spring, Aragon juniors will take a pilot test in the third week of April for the purpose of testing both the school’s infrastructure to administer an online test and the validity of the assessment.
“The eleventh grade test is computer-based, and the test itself is based on how you answer questions. Not all students are going to get the same test, and depending on how you answer a question, that will take you to another question. If you got it right, it tries to identify which further understanding you have, and if you got it wrong, it tries to identify why you didn’t get it right,” says social science teacher and technology coordinator Jim Smith.
This new, computerized assessment raises some concerns, namely about the school’s capacity to administer the test and the students’ ability to take an online test.
“One part of it is getting students to feel comfortable taking tests online—reading two pages of extended paragraphs online, highlighting and notetaking online, and being able to keyboard [the answer] in. The other part of it is if we have the network, bandwidth, and infrastructure to support the test when we have 300 kids taking an online test and sending back information,” says Smith.
Regarding the school’s network, Smith adds, “We’re ahead of most [schools] … We certainly have enough digital devices, so all the eleventh graders can take the tests in two days. We have enough computers, but whether or not our network holds up will be another question.”
Aragon’s pilot test will be administered starting April 23. The test includes a non-performance activity, a classroom activity, and computerized evaluation, says assistant principal Jim Coe.
“There’s a one-hour non-performance activity, one hour in English, one hour in math, and there’s a classroom activity that will be given prior to the test. There’s about an hour of testing and evaluation after that activity,” says Coe.
“Here at Aragon, we are going to give that activity on Monday, April 21, and we’re testing five classes of juniors on Tuesday and five classes of juniors on Wednesday—about 175 students each day.”
Hillsdale High School was the first school in the district to commence its pilot testing, which started on April 8. Unlike at Aragon, both sophomores and juniors were tested, and Hillsdale used wired PCs exclusively rather than a combination of desktops, laptops and Chromebooks.
“We ended up testing in the classes, and splitting the 10th and 11th grades so that only one grade was testing at a time. This allowed us to use three computer labs with wired PCs rather than rely on wireless or laptops. We did have to make sure that all labs had 35 working computers with the appropriate browser, but the greatest difficulty was blocking other classes from accessing the labs during testing,” says Hillsdale principal Jeff Gilbert.
On the pilot test itself, Gilbert comments, “We weren’t supposed to look at the specific material, but in proctoring, we could tell that the test is reading and writing intensive, even in the math tests. We are administering the test over 5 hours, an hour or two each day, for 10th graders and 11th graders.”
Additionally, the assessment comes equipped with special tools for students to use in order facilitate their testing experience. “There are a number of pretty cool tools that students can use online—strike through incorrect answers or highlighting text or using calculators—and we will get better at using those tools as we go along,” adds Gilbert.
So far, there have been no major technological difficulties or large amounts of students having trouble taking the online test. “Some students struggled with the interface, but I think most found it user-friendly, all things considered,” reports Gilbert.
“The amount of time we set aside was not as much as we should have allocated. Reading-based tests are challenging and take a lot of time if students are going to do well. We definitely will think about a different schedule next year, to give students more dedicated time to each test section,” concludes Gilbert.
District Implementation
At the SMUHSD board meeting on Nov. 14, 2013, the Common Core implementation fund spending plan was unveiled. Of the $1.25 billion appropriated by the California Department of Education in Assembly Bill 86, a bill that provided funding for Common Core implementation, SMUHSD received $1.6 million, or roughly $200 per student.
SMUHSD plans to use its preliminary funds in three areas—professional development, instructional materials, and technology. Approximately $900,000 will be allotted to professional development, $200,000 will be allotted to instructional materials, and $500,000 will be allotted to technology.
Funding distribution varies from district to district. “Some other districts might not have been investing in technology, therefore, there’s not a lot of money that’s available for professional development and instructional materials,” adds SMUHSD Associate Superintendent of Instructional Services Andy Parsons.
However, SMUHSD is able to allot the largest portion of its preliminary funds to professional development because Common Core-aligned instructional materials are currently still being developed, and over the last few years, technology has already been upgraded.
On instructional materials, Parson says, “We want interactive textbooks, but they’re not here yet. They’ve been working on the K-8 level, but they haven’t done a lot of stuff for high school yet.”
Additionally, Laurence says the Common Core-aligned materials currently in use are extremely similar to the old materials. “When we go into them, they’re basically the same as the old textbooks, so we’re waiting for a while,” adds Superintendent Scott Laurence. “We don’t want to buy something that’s out of date and not useful.”
Measure O was a bond proposition on the Nov. 2, 2010 ballot for voters in the San Mateo Union High School District, asking for money “to better prepare local students for college/ 21st century jobs,” namely by “[providing] modern classroom technology/computers.”
Measure O catalyzed the development of technology in the district. Now, since the district’s infrastructure is already well-developed, the funds can be used towards other areas. Thus, SMUHSD is in an easier position to implement Common Core.
“We had a huge influx of money for technology three years ago, which makes it so that we don’t have to spend a lot of the Common Core money on technology,” says Laurence.
“We’ve been very fortunate, because there are some schools without computers in the classroom, and since the tests are all computer-based, they’ve been really quickly trying to catch up,” adds Laurence.
The bulk of the money will be appropriated to professional development. “We’re choosing to put a lot of money into professional development because we believe that we have to support our teachers with different instructional strategies to support kids,” says Parsons.
After adopting Common Core, the District made an increased effort to improve professional development, as the number of teacher leaders and professional learning communities grew.
“Professional learning communities are where teachers collaborate around a certain subject area. This year, Aragon was about argumentative writing, and teachers were getting together to see how to implement that across the entire school. At Hillsdale, they talk about small learning in communities and portfolio assessments. They’re all working on various parts of the Common Core, and they have been for the past few years now. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort on professional learning communities in all of our schools,” says Laurence.
TOSAs, or Teachers on Special Assignments, are teacher leaders that aid in curriculum alignment, collaboration, and professional development. The number of TOSAs has increased in conjunction with the gradual implementation of Common Core. “We trust the TOSAs to help pull together the various groups,” adds Laurence.
Curriculum Changes at Aragon
Last fall, the Aragon professional learning community examined the argumentative writing standard and implemented it throughout all subject areas.
“We took the faculty through the teaching of the standard, we took them through the protocol of how to score the writing, and we took them through how to figure out, based on the feedback from the scores, how to re-teach those skills that students needed to learn in order to write that argumentative piece well,” says English teacher and professional development TOSA Genevieve Thurtle.
Additionally, Common Core standards have already begun to change the way Aragon teachers are teaching curriculum.
“Teachers, regardless of the content area, will be focusing more on their students’ reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. It’s not going to alter what they learn in class, but the approach to teaching the class will probably start to change, where you’ll see teachers having students respond to the texts they’re reading, identifying supporting details, and writing in response to what they’re learning. You’re going to see a lot more of those literacy skills being taught in classes other than English,” adds Thurtle.
With the implementation of Common Core, Thurtle is also noticing a shift to more nonfiction texts in Aragon English classes.
“For English classes, many of the standards come to us naturally, but one of the major shifts is that we’re being asked to teach more nonfiction texts. We’re not throwing away novels or plays or poetry, but what we’re trying to do is add in more nonfiction texts like essays, memoirs, and informational texts, so that students are able to read those and understand those well because the vast majority of the reading that they’ll be reading when they go to college is nonfiction. It’s really important for us that our students know how to approach those texts and write about them,” says Thurtle.
The shift to nonfiction texts will be gradual, like the transition to a more Common Core-aligned curriculum as a whole. Like its ultimate goal of preparing students for college and careers, the implementation of Common Core is a gradual, time-consuming effort — but it is one some are willing to make because it just might pay off in the end.
