Alignment of standards, testing and classroom curriculum

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The state tests must be aligned with strong content standards in order to provide useful feedback about student learning. If there is a mismatch between the academic content standards and the content that is assessed then the test results cannot provide information about students' proficiency on the academic standards. A mismatch not only frustrates the students taking the test, teachers, and administrators it undermines the concept of accountability and the theory of action” (See box “Deciding for yourself about the research”) that underlies the NCLB. Unfortunately, the 2006 Federation of Teachers study indicated that in only 11 states were all the tests aligned with state standards (American Federation of Teachers, 2006).

State standards and their alignment with state assessments should be widely available preferably posted on the states websites so they can be accessed by school personnel and the public. A number of states have been slow to do this. Table 12.1. summarizes which states had strong content standards, tests that were aligned with state standards, and adequate documents on online. Only 11 states were judged to meet all three criteria in 2006.

Table 12.1 Strong content standards, alignment, and transparency: evaluation foreach state in 2006 (Adapted from American Federation of Teachers, 2006).
	Standards are strong	Test documents match standards	Testing documents online
Alabama			+
Alaska		+	+
Arizona		+	+
Arkansas		+
California	+	+	+
Colorado			+
Connecticut
Delaware		+
District of Columbia	+	+
Florida		+	+
Georgia	+		+
Hawaii		+
Idaho	+		+
Illinois			+
Indiana		+	+
Iowa		+
Kansas		+	+
Kent ucky		+	+
Louisiana	+	+	+
Maine		+
Maryland		+
Massachusetts	+	+
Michigan	+	+
Minnesota		+	+
Mississippi			+
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada	+	+	+
New Hampshire		+	+
New Jersey	+
New Mexico	+	+	+
New York	+	+	+
North Carolina	+
North Dakota	+	+
Ohio	+	+	+
Oklahoma		+	+
Oregon		+	+
Pennsylvania			+
Rhode Island		+	+
South Carolina
South Dakota	+		+
Tennessee	+	+	+
Texas		+	+
Utah			+

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Alignment of standards, testing and classroom curriculum