The legislation, known as Assembly Bill 484, will fully replace the current STAR testing system in the 2014-15 school year with a new statewide computerized exam that will assess students’ knowledge on an individual basis and the success of the new curriculum that many states are in the process of adopting nationwide.

“This is one of the most important and revolutionary changes to education policy, and California is the right state to lead the way,” said Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, who drafted the bill, in a press release.

The testing system — Measurement of Academic Performance and Progress — differs from STAR in style and content, according to Frank Worrell, a professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Unlike STAR, which predominantly uses pencil and paper, MAPP is completely computer-based, allowing the test to adapt to the ability of the test-taker.

Worrell posed a hypothetical in which two students are given 10 questions and both students answer the first four questions correctly to explain how MAPP works.

“Then one student answers question five wrong, and the other answers it right,” Worrell said. “The first student will then get an easier question designed to figure out what that student doesn’t understand. The one who answers it right will get a more complex, challenging problem.”

Worrell added that the benefit of the test is “a more precise understanding of what students are learning and where their weaknesses are.”

MAPP also tests what students are learning in the classroom — namely, the new Common Core standard, which will be rolled out on a practice basis for some subjects in some grades for the 2013-14 school year.

The curriculum aims to make students think critically and conceptually, making them competitive for a globalized college and career environment, said Karen Hemphill, president of the Berkeley Unified School District School Board.

Hemphill added that the curriculum seeks to change the way schools teach English and mathematics. For mathematics, changes will help students gain a better conceptual understanding of arithmetic and algebra.

Meanwhile, English reading curriculums will feature less fiction. Hemphill estimates that students in middle school will read approximately 50 percent nonfiction, while high school students will read about 70 percent nonfiction.

While Hemphill said she was excited for the changes, she acknowledged there would be a districtwide learning curve as the new curriculum is implemented. To ease the transition, the district plans to host workshops for teachers and parents. It also plans to give intermediary tests this year to make sure students are prepared for next year’s MAPP.

Contact Savannah Luschei at sluschei@dailycal.org.

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Of about 1.7 million students in the class of 2013 taking the test, only slightly more than 700,000 met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark score of 1550 out of 2400, the report states.

The benchmark score indicates a 65 percent probability of students obtaining a B-minus-average or higher GPA in their freshman year of college, a measure the College Board uses as a baseline for success in higher education.

“We must dramatically increase the number of students in K–12 who are prepared for college and careers,” said College Board President David Coleman in a press release. “Only by transforming the daily work that students do can we achieve excellence and equity.”

The College Board is working to expand access to Advanced Placement courses and to PSAT/
NMSQT testing, particularly for low-income students. Last year, however, more than 300,000 students who qualified to take AP courses did not take any, according to the report.

Frank Worrell, a campus professor in the Graduate School of Education, believes the report may reflect a problem UC Berkeley faces — particularly regarding R1A and R1B classes, which are required to satisfy the university’s basic reading and composition requirement.

“At Berkeley, we have a selective group of students,” Worrell said. “But even so, there is a significant minority of students who fail to pass their R1A and R1B courses … At the bottom line, students are just not learning the skills they need (in order) to be successful.”

Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, believes a better predictor of university performance is a student’s high school performance and not just “arbitrary” test scores.

Moreover, he said, minority representation among students taking the test has increased.

“The SAT does not reflect a decrease in college readiness but an increase in diversity,” Schaeffer said. “No longer is it only white, upper-class males taking these tests.”

Among those taking the test in the class of 2013, 46 percent were minority students — the largest percentage in the test’s history, according to the report.

For the 2013-14 academic year, freshmen admitted to UC Berkeley had an average SAT score of 2077, according to a campus press release.

The University of California removed SAT Subject Tests as an admissions requirement for fall 2012 in response to concerns that the tests were not indicative of how well a student may actually perform on campus.

“The SAT could be considered an indictment of public education,” Worrell said, acknowledging its limitations. “Obviously, the issue is more complex than the tests.”

Contact Savannah Luschei at sluschei@dailycal.org.

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Assembly Bill 484, authored by Assemblymember Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, would end the STAR tests that California schools use to judge performance in math and English.

Unlike current testing methods, the new assessments will have public school students take statewide assessments on computers and explain their reasoning through essays in both English and math subjects.

California K-12 schools are transitioning from the current curriculum to the Common Core curriculum, which has been adopted by 45 states. Teachers will be trained to prepare their students for the Common Core standard, which will be adopted by all schools by the 2014-15 school year.

“If you’re in the middle of switching but using the old test, what’s the relevancy of the data you’re collecting?” said Karen Hemphill, president of the Berkeley Unified School District School Board.

The new curriculum is intended to teach students to think conceptually and write analytically in all subjects. The STAR tests do not reflect the curriculum of the Common Core, and this bill aims to make that adjustment sooner.

Frank Worrell, a campus professor in the Graduate School of Education, said the Common Core program will benefit students by preparing them to think conceptually, as is required at the college level.

“What we need to see is the conceptual understanding in students who didn’t necessarily have good conceptual understanding before,” Worrell said. “It will be interesting for us to look at our materials and see that we are actually in line with what they are doing at K-12.”

If the bill is passed, students will take field tests of the new Measurement of Academic Performance and Progress in place of math and English STAR tests this school year. MAPP is a set of assessments aligned to Common Core, and AB 484 includes plans to permanently replace STAR with MAPP in the 2014-15 school year.

The currently used Academic Performance Index, a collection of data from standardized tests, would not be recorded for the next two years, because the data collected from the new testing curriculum cannot be compared to the API data taken from the previous STAR tests.

The bill has been cleared by the Senate Appropriations Committee and is awaiting a vote on the state Senate floor.

“We will know so much more after the State Accountability meeting in October,” said Debbi D’Angelo, the Berkeley school district’s director of evaluation and assessment, in an email. “Through the hard work from the teachers and professional development department, we are preparing students for these exciting changes.”

Tara Hurley covers city news. Contact her at thurley@dailycal.org.

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