The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) released its practice test on May 29, 2013 and it will be available to the entire public (including parents and students) until the official test is released during the 2014-2015 school year. The test will ultimately be administered to grades 3-8 and 11 and there are separate practice tests for each of those grade levels.

Currently the test consists of selected response, technology-enhanced, and constructed response problems only.  Performance tasks are not implemented for mathematics version at this time.  Also important to note is that the practice test is not computer adaptive, while the real test will be.  What this means is that the while the real test will get easier or harder depending on how students answer the questions, this test does not, so everyone taking the test will have the same questions regardless of how they answer them.  Additionally, the questions are not scored so you will not get any feedback on what is needed for a correct answer.

I highly recommend browsing through the test to get a feel for how students will be assessed.  You will quickly realize the differences between traditional multiple choice and selected response (which has more choices and often has multiple correct answers).  Learning how to use the technology-enhanced questions is also an interesting experience.

Note that the practice test does not work using Internet Explorer at this time.  They expect IE to be supported by the Fall of 2013.  So, Windows users will need to use another browser until then.

To take the test, go to: https://sbacpt.tds.airast.org/student/

For instructions to help you out, go to: https://sbacpt.tds.airast.org/student/

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