SMARTER Balanced Assessment

As a preservice teacher in Connecticut, I grew up with the CMTs and the notion that when I graduated, my students would take the CMTs. Little did I know, a new national assessment would be coming. Currently, the NAPE is the only nation-wide assessment that is only given to a sample of students. One controversial idea is the possibility of state by state comparison, in addition to the typical town by town ranking. Will this be a reality? We will not know until all states are a part of this consortium and the assessment is used in all states. 


The SMARTER Balanced is based on the Common Core Standards and is geared for grades 3-8 and 11. The idea is to determine where students fall on a continuum of career and college preparedness. English/Language Arts and Math will be included, as those are two main subjects in the Common Core. There will also be optional formative assessments included. There will be fewer questions than the CMT that need to be answered because this computer based test will change the level of each question to be specific to each student. The question levels will change with each question answered correctly/incorrectly. The test is said to have more than just multiple choice questions like many standardized tests. There will be multiple choice, extended constructed response, and performance tasks. In addition, there will be technology enhanced questions to make the most of the computer based aspect of the assessment.


Taking in this information, many questions arise. Will the computer based aspect of the test may leave some students from low-socioeconomic communities at a disadvantage? Do the performance tasks involved in the SMARTER Balanced Assessment attend to the science principles of inquiry and investigative thinking, like the Embedded Tasks that are currently used in CT? Many of these questions cannot be answered currently as this idea spreads across the nation. For now, I think concluding that many changes to the educational field are ahead of us, at both a state and national level.