Category Archives: June Atkinson

I’ve written in the past about the SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) and its ramifications for keeping North Carolina tied to Common Core even with two bills in our General Assembly attempting to get us out of the standards. For those who have not dug into the SBAC, I encourage you to do so. Start with the Cooperative Agreement between the U.S. Department of Education and the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium.

The Cooperative Agreement in a nutshell is the U.S. Dept. of Education getting around the law barring them from creating national tests and curriculum by farming it out to a private company. It was paid for with your tax dollars via the Obama administration’s Stimulus package, of which a portion of was funneled into the Race To The Top Grants. The purpose statement from the Cooperative Agreement:

The purpose of this agreement is to support the consortium recipient in developing new, common assessment systems that are valid, reliable and fair for their intended purposes and for all student subgroups, and that measure student knowledge and skills against a common set of college- and career-ready standards in mathematics and English language arts. In light of the technical nature of this grant and the fact that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) will likely be reauthorized during the course of this project, the Department will provide necessary flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, technology, and laws by working collaboratively with the recipient through this agreement. The objective is to assist the consortium in fulfilling, at minimum, the goals articulated in the consortium’s approved Race to the Top Assessment (RTTA) application, requirements established in the RTTA Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) for New Awards for Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 that was published in the Federal Register on April 9, 2010, and any subsequent additions detailed through this agreement.

The price tag was large:

The estimated cost for the work to be performed under this Agreement is $159,976,843 and $15,872,696 for the supplemental award.

This article will hit some of the bigger reasons why North Carolina needs to get out of the SBAC. However, before going forward, it is worth noting that the SBAC tests were a confirmed “glitch” fiasco and the tests themselves, like PARCC’s, were shrouded in secrecy. Teachers have told me they were not allowed to see the pilot test beforehand in NC nor were they allowed to talk about specifics afterward.

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