Flash Report: TESTING THE CALIFORNIA STANDARDS TEST

Those disparities should lead parents to question whether the CST is a reliable measure of actual student learning. If students do not perform well on NAEP exams, schools face no consequences. However, there is powerful pressure for student performance to improve on the CST because the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires 100-percent proficiency by the 2013-14 school year, or the state risks losing around $3 billion in annual federal funding. For all its noble intentions, this requirement introduces perverse incentives for states to water down their academic standards, lower passing scores, and inflate passing rates by letting students apply extra credit work to boost their test scores.

All this fudging misleads parents and misses the point of standards-based education, which is student learning. Such quick-fixes also mask the need for fundamental, systemic improvement of the California public education system.

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