Palo Alto High School Students can look forward to a new standardized tests this spring instead of the previous STAR test.

California just passed AB 484, abolishing the Standardized Testing And Reporting tests that students have taken each spring since 1999, and implementing the new Common Core State Standards in their stead. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is creating assessments that adhere to the new state testing standards.

Students throughout California will take a field test this spring for the new assessment. This will help the test developers calibrate the test; that is, how well students do on the field test will indicate what grade level questions are appropriate for.

Most likely all juniors will take the test in the spring, assistant principal Kathleen Laurence says.

The test is taken entirely on computers.

Once implemented in the spring of 2015, the test will be adaptive, meaning that if a student answers a question cor- rectly, the next question is harder, and if a student answers a question incorrectly, the next question is easier. The field test in the spring of 2014 will not be adaptive.

Where the STAR test focused on fact retention, the Smarter Balanced Assessment will focus on synthesis and analysis.