Educators have been chomping at the bit to get a better idea of what the tests for the common standards will look like. Getting a peek at sample items is an important way to shape curriculum, both for school districts and publishers, so the sound of a restless field has been getting louder and louder as the school year gets under way.
Acutely aware of that, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium released a new round of items this week. They're not the first ones out there; as we reported to you in August, both consortia—SBAC and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC—had been circulating items in the field. Our story provides links to dozens of items, particularly from SBAC.
Since we ran that story, PARCC issued another round of sample items. Should you have any doubt about how eager folks are to see this stuff, traffic to PARCC's site crashed the server when the sample items were announced.
