Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium

A multi-state consortium that develops and administers the Smarter Balanced Assessments (SBAC), used by California, Washington, Oregon, Connecticut, Nevada, and others as their state ELA and math accountability test for grades 3–8 and 11. Through a 2021 collaboration with National PTA, Smarter Balanced publicly acknowledged the assessment-literacy gap with parents and commissioned focus-group research on SBAC parent reports.

Parent score reports

SBAC parent reports include:

  • A scaled score (overall numeric score for ELA or math).
  • A performance level — above standard, near standard, or below standard — for the test as a whole.
  • Claim-level breakdowns describing performance on specific content areas within the test.

Research

  • Findings From Virtual Focus Groups Among Parents (2022, with National PTA, conducted by Edge Research) — focus-group research on parent interpretation of SBAC score reports. Five groups, 29 parents of 3rd–8th graders, including a dedicated Hispanic/Spanish-speaking group. See source page.

How parents read SBAC reports

The 2022 Edge Research findings show parents understand the above/near/below standard labels in the abstract but struggle in three specific ways: claim-level skill-area results feel un-actionable next to the overall scaled score; predictive language ("if this student were to test again") creates frustration; and the K–8 college-readiness framing doesn't resonate ("college is not necessarily a goal for everyone"). Parents ask for more normative comparisons (school, district, national), not fewer.

The findings also assert a co-equal problem the consortium had not previously named publicly: "Teacher assessment system literacy, we believe, is just as important as parent literacy."

Network observation

Both National PTA and Learning Heroes — two of the most active parent-side organizations on this topic — have partnered on assessment-literacy work. PTA partners with the vendor; Learning Heroes partners with PTA. PTA appears to be a connecting hub between the vendor and advocacy sides of the same problem. Edge Research, the firm conducting the 2022 SBAC focus groups, also conducts the HCM Strategists / Learning Heroes report-card redesign research — an unusually concentrated supplier of qualitative parent research on this topic.

Follow-ups

  • Whether participating SBAC states (CA, WA, OR, CT, NV) changed how they communicate Smarter Balanced results as a result of the 2022 research.
  • Whether the Spanish-speaking focus group surfaced findings distinct from the other four — the report does not segment results by group.