Nearly 500,000 California Students Test in One Day

On May 9, nearly 500,000 California students simultaneously signed on to take the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) tests, the highest number of students testing simultaneously during the 2017 spring testing season in the state. Most of the students were taking the Smarter Balanced math or English language arts tests.

A May 29 EdSource story states that nearly 3.2 million students have completed at least one of the Smarter Balanced tests, according to the California Department of Education (CDE). About 3.3 million students are expected to take the Smarter Balanced math and English tests in spring 2017.

“Testing has been going very well overall,” CDE spokesman Peter Tira told EdSource. “We have the most capacity we’ve ever had. The system can accommodate 640,000 concurrent users.”

In a May 11 press release, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said he was pleased with how testing was going.

“We are in the third year of administering these state-of-the-art assessments, and the capacity of our system and our schools to efficiently administer these tests increases every year,” Torlakson said. “Our students and families are the ultimate winners here. The information from these tests will help our schools refine their teaching, improve learning, and better prepare our students for success.”

For three weeks, Smarter Balanced promoted the value of the high school test in California with the “Take the Test. Plan the Rest” campaign. Students in California can use their high school Smarter Balanced scores at 256 colleges and universities in 10 states.