The new computer-based MAPP tests that California students will see this spring will reflect nearly two decades of changes in technology and academic standards.

The outgoing STAR tests were based on academic standards that California developed and adopted in the mid-1990s. The tests themselves had students use pencils to fill in bubbles on multiple-choice questions. Critics have maintained that the STAR tests put too much emphasis on students repeating facts and figures memorized in class, and not enough emphasis on their ability to think their way through information and solve problems.

The new MAPP tests are based on the Common Core academic standards, developed by the National Governors Association and other groups, which California’s State Board of Education adopted in 2010. The MAPP tests will be computer-based — a change the California Department of Education says will “allow for a much broader range of test questions than the multiple-choice exams given under STAR. They will emphasize critical thinking, reasoning and problem-solving, modeling the kind of teaching and learning needed to prepare all students for the demands of college and the modern workplace.”

The tests were developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, a multi-state group. They will involve some moving graphics, and there will be questions where students will be asked to type in their own responses, rather than pick from a list of four or five possible answers.

The new tests also will be computer-adaptive, meaning that “a student’s prior responses affect the difficulty of subsequent questions, allowing for a far more precise measurement of student skills than the former tests,” according to the California Department of Education.

In other words, students who correctly answer several questions will then see some slightly tougher questions, while a student who misses the answer on several questions may have the test automatically go down a level to see if the student can answer the questions at that tier.

The MAPP tests that students will see this spring will essentially be a dry run to “allow experts to gauge the accuracy and reliability of individual test items … in other words, a ‘field test’ or ‘test of the tests,’ ” as the California Department of Education puts it. “No field test scores will be produced or reported” for individual students or schools.

It is not clear what the transition to MAPP tests will mean for California’s Academic Performance Index, which has been used to rank schools using a three-digit number, with schools scoring 800 points or higher being considered “high-performing schools.” API rankings have been largely based on STAR test results.

School districts up and down the state are responding to the tests’ demands on technology in different ways. The mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District, which educates more than 655,000 students, is in the midst of a $1 billion effort that aims to put an iPad tablet loaded with educational software in the hands of every student. The Los Angeles Times estimated the tablets will cost $768 each, fully equipped.

Southern California’s Perris Union High School District, which is buying Chromebook tablets, will pay $344 per tablet, while some of the lower-end tablets purchased by the Riverside Unified are being purchased for about $150 each, the Times reported.

John Deasy, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, defended the choice of the popular but pricey iPads, saying, “Our youth deserve the best we can afford.”

Other districts justified their purchase of lower-priced tablets.

“The iPad is the gold standard,” Jay McPhail, a Riverside Unified School District senior administrator, told the Times. “Our problem is we don’t have any gold.”

Davis school district officials will be buying several hundred new computers this year, with an eye toward the MAPP tests. No decision has been made yet about what model of computer or tablet will be purchased.

— Reach Jeff Hudson at [email protected] or 530-747-8055.

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