School tests

New national standards will mean new and more frequent tests in a few years for millions of students nationwide.

Aided by $330 million in federal funds, two groups of states will compete to design standardized tests measuring student performance in keeping with the new English and math standards adopted by 44 states that have 85 percent of the country's schoolchildren.

The exams developed in cooperation with universities are expected to be ready for the 2014-15 school year.

The common exams are intended to overcome a shortcoming of the current decentralized national educational system with individual state tests that vary greatly in difficulty and their measures of success. With disparate standards, a student doing well in one state may perform poorly on another state's exam.

As an advantage over current testing programs, the proposed tests are expected to be computer-based, which would allow them to be administered more frequently. Proponents say it will provide teachers more immediate feedback than once-a-year exams to identify students who are not performing well and to adjust instruction based on test results.

The tests will also go beyond more familiar question-and-answer or multiple-choice exams. Students will be asked to complete performance-based tasks requiring them to respond to a given problem that will test critical thinking, writing and other skills.

In announcing the testing plans, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said the "new generation of state assessments will be a game-changer in public education."

The tests, which will mean some trade-offs, are already meeting resistance since they will replace current state exams. As the states move toward more uniform standards and tests, though, care must be taken that they do not relax or interfere with states such as New York that have worked diligently to implement stringent standards to raise student expectations and performance.