In the state of Washington, the state- and federal-mandated standardized test is called Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). The intent of the SBAC is to test students on “knowledge, skills, and processes students display at predetermined levels of achievement” in the academic areas of ELA and math. The knowledge, skills, and processes are based off the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The test scores are used to calculate the achievement gap. The achievement gap is the difference in average test scores between various minority students to their white peers. First and foremost, SBAC is designed for native English-speaking students. According to SmarterBalanced.org, “new state standards are challenging students to understand subject matter more deeply, think more critically, and apply their learning to the real world,” in English. The SBAC tests are taken on a computer over a limited amount of time. The testing window is from March to May and individual schools and districts determine the best …show more content…
However, I believe that data from what students are doing in the classroom is more important than data from a standardized test, because not all students will do well on tests. The data from these standardized tests, SBAC and ELPA21, does give classroom teachers information, however, it should not be the sole way to determine student achievement. Standardized tests require students to be put into a box, they can only respond one way, and it does not allow for creativity or flexibility that some students need to demonstrate their knowledge. Classroom teachers need to differentiate instruction and allow students to have the flexibility to demonstrate their knowledge. As stated above, knowledge can be coded in another language and students need to feel comfortable enough to either use that language or have a way to explain that they do not know how to say it in