Technology takes over! As times are changing and everything is becoming digital, old fashioned bubble-sheet testing is just not cutting it and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is making its first appearance this year.
The SBAC is an adaptive test, and as assistant principal Brian Pope explains,“It’s like if you go to college and take an entrance exam. Everybody starts off with the same general type of questions and if you get it right, it jumps up in difficulty and if you get it wrong, it drops. It moves with your answers and gages what you know and don’t.” This takes accomodation of understanding what you’re reading with the technology students are used to today.
Could this be a more effective way of testing? Pope certainly thinks so: “It’ll take some time for students and staff to get used to it, but I do believe that this is the better way to test the students in terms of getting their overall knowledge.”
Since the SBAC is a much more difficult test, it is “up in the air” but Pope believes since students “seem to be more interested in this test,” he has to believe that students will put forth more effort than in the past since students “had no reason to do well other than the fact that the school asked them to.” Although Pope believes William Shakespeare and Leo Tolstoy is “great literature,” he also believes that students would be more engaged and interested in what’s going on in technology and ultimately end up with better scores.
Pope was in charge of California Standards Tests (CST) for the past couple years and says that students bubble in patterns such as: ABCD and CBAB. Now, the Early Assessment Program (EAP), a program through Cal State and other colleges, is written in with the SBAC so if the students do well, it’ll allow them to test out of the lower level classes of colleges. Of course students will know this when taking the test so the effort is higher than it has been in the past.
Students kindergarten through twelve (K-12) are now required to take this test, but only grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 are available at the moment. Student’s at Colton High School and most other schools in California are now able to take this practice test. Pope says “Going from testing in paper to computer, is half the battle.” and knowing how the tests would be ran is very beneficial.
With technology making an incredible impact on education today, we hope for this testing to show a very positive impact on the students as well as the school.
