Smarter Balance Assessment Affects Special Education Students In California

Officials from California's Department of Education had made important changes to special education students who are taking the state's standardized test.

The Smart Balanced Test requires the students to control the volume of the computer program that reads the questionnaires and glossaries. It also provides Spanish language glossaries to help students who have disabilities and classified as English Learners. 

A statement from Keric Ashley, Deputy Superintendent of the California Department of education said, "We found some areas that we wanted to improve." 

Ashley also said, "What we learned is that accommodations may work for a vast majority of special education students." "But, like we heard with the text-to-speech changes that we made for some special education students, things didn't quite work as well as we might have hoped that they would."

According to Southern California Public Radio, the changes affect more than two dozen tools available to educators to help the students taking the test. It contains reading the questionnaires out loud, frequent breaks, and changing the color of the screen of the computer to help the students see the questionnaires easier.

Mike Finn, a resource teacher at Marshall High School said, "And the kid is going to put on the headphones and listen to the test while he's reading along with on the screen." "That's a big change and it sort of robs us of our ability to nuance that," Finn added.

Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC) measures student's knowledge of the common core state standard in English language arts and mathematics. It replaces the former paper-based and multiple-choices assessments for grade 3-8 and 11 students, according to Campbell Union High School district

SBAC are available in California and currently working with 21 other states as part of Smarter Balanced Assessments. Teachers from k-12 to higher education are involved in the design, scoring and testing of these new test.