Students in the Davis public schools will start taking California’s new SBAC tests — online — starting Monday, April 20. Testing will continue through May 8.

This spring’s round of testing will complete the transition from California’s old STAR (Standardized Testing and Reporting) test regime, which became an annual spring ritual for students in 1999. The STAR tests had students use a pencil to fill in “bubbles” on a paper form to indicate their answers. The STAR tests were based on a set of California academic standards developed in the mid-1990s, and did not presume online fluency.

The new SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) tests are an online exam based on new academic standards — the Common Core State Standards, which California adopted in 2010. The Common Core standards are often described as focusing on problem-solving ability and analytical skills, whereas the old standards put more emphasis on memorization.

Last spring, the Davis school district participated on a limited basis in a statewide field test of the new SBAC tests — a trial run of the new system. The results of last year’s testing were used by the California Department of Education to evaluate the new system for measuring the progress of California students. But the results were not used to rate individual schools.

This year, the SBAC testing will be “live,” and the test results will be reported. Within four to six weeks after the SBAC tests are complete, parents will receive a report on how their children did. And this year’s test results will form the baseline of a new statewide system for evaluating the academic performance of public schools. (California legislators have placed the old Academic Performance Index on hiatus, and it is unlikely to return.)

Marcia Bernard, the district’s director of instructional technology, added that “this year, most of the SBAC testing will be happening in classrooms on Chromebooks, as opposed to students rotating through computer labs (like last year).”

What should parents expect? “The new SBAC tests hold students to a higher standard of learning, using different measures of assessment (as compared to the old STAR tests),” said Clark Bryant, associate superintendent with the Davis school district.

And Bryant advises parents that the results from the new tests are unlikely to provide a mirror image of the scores the old STAR tests generated.

“We expect overall proficiency scores will not be as high as in past years,” he said. “This does not mean that students are less proficient than they used to be. No student or parent should be discouraged (by the new scores), which will not be used to determine whether a student moves to the next grade. Rather, scores will form a baseline for assessment format and content.”

During this year’s initial round of “live” SBAC testing, a few bumps, hiccups and delays probably are inevitable. This will be the first time that the Davis school district has tried testing so many students, at the same time, using online technology.

Students in grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 will take the SBAC tests in English and math. Students in grades 5, 8 and 10 will take the California Standards Test in science. Other grades will not do the SBAC tests.

The new SBAC tests are also “computer-adaptive,” meaning that the test will automatically adjust the difficulty of the questions based on the answers that students give. If a student answers questions correctly, that student will start to see more challenging questions. Incorrect answers can trigger easier questions. This feature provides more accurate results in terms of evaluating a student’s knowledge, especially for low- or high-achieving students.

Students and teachers have been preparing by taking an online SBAC practice test. The practice tests were designed to help students get familiar with the new online format — for instance, students may need to “drag and drop” items on the computer screen, something they never had to do on the old paper-based STAR tests.

This week’s practice tests — with multiple Davis schools participating simultaneously — also were used to make sure the school district’s technological infrastructure could handle the load with so many students taking the test at the same time.

If history is any guide, Davis students will adjust to the new tests quickly. Over the past 15 years, Davis students (as a group) have shown themselves to be adept at figuring out how to score well on STAR tests, the California High School Exit Exam, the SAT and ACT, various Advanced Placement exams, and other standardized tests that local students have been asked to take.

But given that the transition to SBAC testing is a major change affecting the great majority of students, most observers are expecting there will inevitably be a few bumps and pauses along the way.

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

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