Standardized Testing in Alabama and Nationwide. Updated

Standardized testing serves several purposes. Tests provide feedback on a student's performance. They can help teachers understand student achievement relative to class objectives. Tests can also help administrators identify excellent teachers and those who need more professional support. And, likewise, they can help administrators and policymakers identify which schools are high performing and which are not serving students effectively. Alabama's previous generation of standardized tests provided a skewed picture on all of these fronts. In short, previous tests only considered Alabama's students performance as it related to their peers in the state, but the new tests will broaden this horizon. Alabama is implementing a new generation of standardized tests to provide more clarity, however the new assessments will still only provide a snapshot of student performance at one point in time. It will take much more work and research to implement any assessment that captures student growth modeling and provides more than just an annual snapshot. This memo provides a brief overview of the standardized testing landscape in Alabama, especially as it relates to the College and Career Ready Standards in our state and the Common Core State Standards nationally. [This report was originally released December 2013.]