California State Testing Underway at Glendale Unified
GUSD spends about $37,000 annually on both materials and personnel to administer California State Tests, according to Public Information, Assessment & Evaluation Director Dr. Linda Gubler-Junge. This seems like a very low number considering that teachers administer the tests within classrooms, but perhaps it only includes district-level administration. The state of California’s budget line item for STAR, a sub-category of California’s $90.7 million pupil testing program, is $62 million. An earlier post on this subject is here.
The annual Standardized Testing and Report Program (STAR) for 2nd – 11th graders is now underway. Test booklets, received weeks earlier, must be unopened and kept secure until the testing date. There are four test categories, including one for students with disabilities, one for students with significant cognitive disabilities, and one for Spanish-speaking English learners.
Prior years’ test results and other academic data on Glendale Unified School District sites are available on this page of the GUSD website.
The figure of $37,000 as the cost of administering California State tests actually seems high. Are the test booklets and materials printed by the State at the State’s expense, and shipped to GUSD for GUSD to administer? Does this cost simply allocate the value of the time spent by GUSD administration and staff on State testing? If so, those personnel would otherwise be working and would getting paid anyway, with or without the State tests. They would simply just be doing something else if State tests were not being administered.
Reply received from Dr. Linda Gubler Junge, GUSD Director of Public Information:
The vast majority of GUSD funding comes from the state–so we receive funding from the state and pay for CST-related costs.
GUSD needs to handle ordering materials directly in order to make sure we get the right number of each test at each level and subject for our students. The State contracts with Educational Testing Services for testing, so we process our orders through them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev7Y-XbapLc&feature=response_watch