State Testing

The Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments are part of the state testing system called the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress or CAASPP for 3rd - 8th grade students.  The CAASPP System is designed to promote high-quality teaching and learning by giving information to teachers, students, and their families about what students know and can do. This information is just one piece in understanding a student’s readiness for college and career. 

The Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments are computer adaptive. The online tests give students many different types of questions that allow them to interact with the test content. For some of the math questions, for example, your child might be asked to drag and drop things from one place on the screen to another or draw a graph to solve a problem. Computer-adaptive tests adjust the difficulty of the questions based on the answers that students give. As students answer questions correctly, they receive more challenging questions. Incorrect answers trigger easier questions. This helps keep the test short for many students and makes sure the scores are very accurate, especially for students who score very low or very high.

Test results are just one piece of information about how your child is doing in school. Together with report cards and other information, test results help in understanding a student’s readiness for success in higher grades, college, and career.