DENVER The standardized tests that every public school student in Colorado takes are in for a big change.
The state board of education heard sales pitches Thursday from two groups that want to design a replacement for the Colorado Student Assessment Program, the standardized tests that a generation of Colorado schoolchildren has taken.
Two multi-state groups are competing to offer the new Colorado exams starting in 2015, as part of a national overhaul of standardized tests.
We want to create high-quality assessments. It certainly means getting away from just the fill-in-the-bubble tests that weve been using, said Mike Cohen, a representative of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a group of 24 mostly Southern states.
A group of mainly Northern and Western states called the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium also made a pitch to the state board of education on Thursday.
The new tests, ideally, will be given on computers, allowing questions that cant be given in a pencil-on-paper format, Cohen said.
Unlike the CSAP, which focused on schoolwide scores, the new exam results are supposed to predict how well individual students are prepared for future years of school. Scores will tell parents whether their kids are on track to meet high school graduation standards, Cohen said.
CSAP critics say the high-stakes tests created a school culture that sucked the joy and creativity out of learning while teachers would teach to the test.
Cohen said the new exams will require students to be able to read complex texts and draw evidence from them to make an argument.
If thats what teachers are going to teach to, its not so bad, Cohen said.
The new test has been on the drawing board since 2008, when the Legislature created the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids, or CAP4K a new system of standards that is supposed to make sure every high school graduate is ready for college or the workforce.
New tests are supposed to replace the CSAP and measure progress toward the new graduation standards.
But children who were in first grade when the Legislature passed CAP4K probably will be in eighth grade before they take the new test.
State board of education members are getting impatient.
Whats the holdup? asked board member Paul Lundeen, who wanted to know why Colorado would have to wait until 2015 to get a test from either consortium.
Cohen said it takes time to develop innovative new tests, get agreement from all the states involved and make sure the technology works.
While it seems like a long time, for those of us working on it, it feels like its nearly not as long as wed like it to be, Cohen said.
The new tests are going to be expensive.
The state board of education wanted $25 million from the Legislature to start developing the new tests, but Gov. John Hickenlooper declined to include the request in his budget.
Colorado pays about $15 per student per test, according to information from Cohens group.
Reach Joe Hanel at joeh@cortezjournal.com.