Common Core State Standards in 2014: District Implementation of Consortia-Developed Assessments

Later this school year, states that have adopted the voluntary Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are scheduled to begin testing students' progress in learning the content of the standards in mathematics and English language arts (ELA). Many of these states belong to one of two consortia--the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)--that are developing online assessments aligned to the CCSS. Since the consortia assessments will be ready to administer in school year 2014-15, states, districts, and schools have just months to ensure that their teachers and students are fully prepared to teach and learn the content in the CCSS, and that systems are in place to facilitate the online administration of the consortia- developed assessments. The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states to measure student mastery of state academic standards and use those test results, along with other information, to make school accountability decisions. Therefore, CCSSadopting states that administer the consortia-developed assessments will use the results on those tests for important accountability decisions in the coming year. In addition, some states may eventually use these assessments results as a factor in decisions about college course placement or granting of a high school diploma. What steps have districts taken to prepare for the new assessments, and what challenges do districts face in implementing them? This report addresses these and other questions using data from a comprehensive survey of school districts conducted by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) at the George Washington University. The survey was administered in the spring of 2014 to school superintendents or their designees in a nationally representative sample of districts in states that had adopted the CCSS at the time of the survey. Key findings included: (1) Impact of new assessments; (2) Impact on other local assessments; (3) Technology challenges; and (4) Plans for student remediation and support. The data in this report come from a subset of districts participating in the broader survey. The subset consists of districts that a) were located in CCSS-adopting states that belonged to either the Smarter Balanced or PARCC consortium at the time the survey was conducted; and b) reported that they intended to administer assessments developed by one of these consortia.