Photo past Laurie Udesky/EdSource Today

tertiary graders reviewing the Smarter Balanced practice examination at Bay Shore Simple School in Daly City

Photo by Laurie Udesky/EdSource Today

3rd graders reviewing the Smarter Counterbalanced practice test at Bay Shore Elementary School in Daly City

California's efforts to dilute the ascendant role of testing in schools – prominently led past Gov. Jerry Brownish – are getting support from some of the same players responsible for entrenching it in the national teaching reform calendar over the by decade.

In recent days, both President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have chosen for reducing the standardized tests children have to take to 2 percent of their instructional time.

In California, that would amount to no more 3.v days per yr out of an average school year of 180 instructional days. That would be in improver to the quizzes, tests, Advanced Placement exams and local district "benchmark" tests that students take on a regular basis throughout the year.

In a videotaped speech yesterday, Obama said tests shouldn't take up so much time that they "crowd out teaching and learning."

"Nosotros need to make certain we are not obsessing about testing, that kids are enjoying learning, and teachers are able to operate with creativity," he said. "Learning is a lot more than than just filling in the bubble."

But California has already moved aggressively in reducing mandatory standardized tests. In fact, Country Board of Education President Michael Kirst, one of Brown's closest advisors on education, said that as a result of Assembly Beak 484, passed in 2013, the state has eliminated half of the standardized tests students were taking. In shifting to the new Smarter Balanced tests aligned to the Common Core Land Standards, the state dropped nearly all previous state standardized tests.

Among the tests eliminated by the state were standardized tests in 2nd-, ninth- and 10th-grade math and English language arts, end-of-course math tests in Algebra I, Algebra 2, geometry, general math and integrated math; all history tests; and end-of-course tests in loftier school in biology, chemistry, physics and integrated scientific discipline.

And that was before the latest test-cut action signed into constabulary past Dark-brown this month – the suspension of the high school exit examination for the next several years – and awarding of high school diplomas retroactively to all students denied i as a upshot of failing the exam going back to 2006.

Kirst said that the state is now essentially only administering standardized tests required by the federal government under the Simple and Secondary Teaching Human activity, including third-through eighth-grade and 11th-grade English language arts and math, also every bit science in grades v, 8, and ten. These are tests that are not optional if California nevertheless wants to receive federal educational activity aid. "We are basically down to federal requirements," he said.

However, Smarter Balanced also offers – and the state has paid for – interim tests in math and English language arts, which are modeled after end-of-year tests and can be given upward to three times during the schoolhouse year. While time-consuming, they are non state-mandated. Districts  can decide if they are beneficial.

AB 484 too asks Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson to recommend a new organization that could include additional country standardized tests, district tests in some subjects and other ways of measuring student achievement, such every bit portfolios of educatee work. Working with the research agency WestEd, Torlakson volition present a comprehensive plan to the Land Board and the Legislature side by side March.

But last May, sounding strikingly like President Obama yesterday, Brownish said "There has to exist a rest to measurements." He cited 1 of the favorite aphorisms of his authorities, attributed to Albert Einstein: "Not everything in life can be measured, and non everything that can be measured is worth measuring."

He spoke disparagingly of standardized tests that begin in kindergarten and "become footling children at the age of 5 infected with this thought that everything is measurable, and that they are accountable every day to meliorate."

"I can tell you that the idea that you can improve every mean solar day for the rest of your life is not true," he said. "I simply think there is a bit of a life cycle. Things get up and go down."

President Obama's backtracking on the excessive utilize of test scores comes afterward years of California battling his assistants on that event. The most visible instance was the state'southward opposition to using standardized test scores as a significant part of a teacher's evaluation.

The state's refusal to use examination scores for instructor evaluation purposes butterfingers California for extra points in its two failed applications for a share of $4.3 billion in the Race to the Top competition intended to promote schoolhouse and district innovation.

Two years ago, Duncan insisted that California likewise administrate the old California Standards Tests even though it had chosen to requite a Smarter Balanced field exam instead. He  threatened California with the loss of possibly billions of dollars in federal assist if it didn't do both. But the Legislature balked at Duncan'due south need for double testing, and Duncan backed downwardly.

Yesterday Torlakson welcomed the reduced testing plan put forrard past the Obama administration but noted that California "has been a leader in trying to limit testing. "

Over the weekend, Duncan took some responsibility for placing too much emphasis on testing in the reforms advocated past the administration. "It's important that we're all honest with ourselves," he said. "At the federal, country and local level, we take all supported policies that take contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will piece of work with states, districts and educators to help solve information technology."

Withal when information technology comes to California, in that location are still unresolved tensions. California is the only state to have had its application for a waiver for some of the near onerous requirements of the No Child Left Backside law denied by the Obama administration. As a upshot, California is one of a scattering of states that must nevertheless meet virtually all the requirements of a constabulary that even Duncan has denounced as "outmoded and cleaved."

It is still far from articulate what impact the issues raised by President Obama and Secretary Duncan, who will be stepping down from his post at the end of the yr, will have on the testing fence, or on California. "I take not seen any data to support the magic number of 2 percent," state board president Kirst said, referring to President Obama's call to reduce testing to ii per centum of instructional fourth dimension.

Even more than fundamentally, he said he wasn't even sure "what the definition of tests beingness used in this debate is."

To go more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource'southward no-toll daily email on latest developments in instruction.