LA Unified will not take Smarter Balanced test in elementary, middle school this spring

Elementary and middle school students in Los Angeles Unified will not take the state’s Smarter Balanced standardized tests in English language arts and math this spring, district officials said on Thursday. Students in grade 11 will continue with the annual statewide assessments.

Students in grades 3-8 will instead take assessments that the district has already given multiple times this school year to measure student learning and growth, said Alison Yoshimoto-Towery, chief academic officer for L.A. Unified. That includes STAR for math and English language arts in middle school, and elementary students will be taking assessments provided by Edulastic.

“Our primary focus is just around preserving instructional time, and we already had planned to give those other assessments,” Yoshimoto-Towery said.

The district decided to keep using the Smarter Balanced assessments at the high school level, however, because colleges sometimes use the data from the statewide standardized tests in admissions, according to Yoshimoto-Towery. Also, students in that grade level have taken the assessment before and are more likely to be familiar with it.

The Smarter Balanced tests in math and English language arts are among several tests school districts are typically required to administer to different student groups as prescribed by state and federal law.

In March 2020, state and federal education officials allowed states to suspend annual standardized testing due to the pandemic. But this year, education officials appointed by President Joe Biden said that school districts must resume testing, despite having a wide variation among school districts returning to in-person instruction and an ongoing pandemic. California has since signaled to school districts that they are expected to administer Smarter Balanced except in situations where the assessment would not be a “viable” option.

However, criteria on what viability means remains sparse. State education leaders said they plan to release updated guidance in the coming days, and some school districts have moved forward in the meantime.

More than 70 campuses in L.A. Unified, the largest district in California, reopened for in-person instruction this week, creating a confusing landscape for how to measure student growth and learning in a standardized way. Schools can select when they start to administer their assessments, and although reopening is expected to accelerate, there will certainly be a mix of student testing at home and in person.