(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Recently I wrote about Arizona’s system of testing having jumped the shark. The cut scores for the AIMS had been dropped severely, and the state’s version of the Terra Nova exam spun a tale of Arizona students scoring above the national average in every grade and subject tested. Arizonans were asked to believe this, despite having a very difficult to educate K-12 population and NAEP scores below the national average in every test given since the early 1990s.
I am pleased to say that the Arizona legislature, acting in a bipartisan fashion, took corrective action. Essentially they limited the current testing contracts to a single year, and appointed a commission to design a new testing system, specifying the use of a college readiness exam as a graduation exam along the lines of the Michigan model with the ACT.
The challenge now will be for the commission to create a challenging, consistent system of testing providing proper transparency for parents, teachers, administrators and policymakers. The first step was to admit that there was a problem, which the Arizona legislature has now done emphatically.
Posted by matthewladner 
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