The district’s work implementing Common Core Standards also includes preparation for an entirely new approach to monitoring and assessing student progress called the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Developed by a state-led consortium, Smarter Balanced is a high-quality assessment system aligned with Common Core that will give parents, teachers and students accurate information about student achievement. The test results will also provide teachers with information to tailor instruction to student needs. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium website offers sample questions (see below) of the Assessment, which the District will implement in the 2014-15 school year.

While we prepare our district for this upcoming change, we continue to administer the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) test, the State’s annual student assessment test. Other assessments of both students and school sites are on-going and will continue into the future, including STAR , Physical Fitness Tests, Healthy Kids Survey and the California English Learner Development Test (CELDT).

Smarter Balanced Assessments

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is a state-led consortium working to develop next-generation assessments that accurately measure student progress toward college- and career-readiness. This test will be administered completely on computers using computer-adaptive testing, or CAT, which allows the test to adapt to the student as the assessment is taking place, presenting an individually tailored set of questions to each student that will quickly identify which skills students have mastered. To learn more about Smarter Balanced Assessments, we encourage visiting the Consortium’s website which a wealth of information including the following:

Frequently Asked Questions About Smarter Balanced Assessments
Sample English Language Arts Question
Sample Mathematics Question

Standard Testing and Reporting (STAR)

The STAR test assesses student knowledge of grade-level content as well as state content standards. Students in the 4th and 7th grade participate in a STAR writing test and students in grades 2 through 11 take the STAR multiple choice test. STAR results are mailed home to all parrents and are also available at each school site and online at the California Department of Education's STAR website.

Physical Fitness Test (PFT)

The PFT, completed by students in the spring of their 5th, 7th and 9th grades, provides information that can be used by students to assess and plan personal fitness programs, by teachers to design the physical education program curriculum, and by parents/guardians to understand their children’s fitness levels. 

 
Healthy Kids Survey

The Healthy Kids Survey is a comprehensive and customizable youth survey that provides essential and reliable health risk assessment and resilience information to schools, districts, and communities.

The District is required to administer the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) to all 5th- and 7th-grade students every two years. The Healthy Kids Survey meets the assessment requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) for Title IV Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities. Parent permission was required to participate. More information about California Healthy Kids Survey is available at www.wested.org/hks.

California English Learner Development Test (CELDT)

Students in kindergarten through grade twelve whose home language is not English are required by law to take an English skills test. In California, the test is called the CELDT. This test helps schools identify students who need to improve their skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English. Schools also give the test each year to students who are still learning English. More information on CELDT is available on the California Department of Education website.