As reported in Education Week, while nearly every state that adopted the Common Core State Standards appears to be sticking with that commitment, many states have not yet adopted tests aligned with the common core and the two federally funded assessment consortia producing them.

The most recent tally shows that 13 states do not belong to either the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. At the peak in 2010, PARCC claimed the membership of 26 states, and Smarter Balanced had 31. Currently, 16 states and the District of Columbia are sticking with PARCC, and 22 are in Smarter Balanced.

And in some cases, states appear to be willing to sacrifice the tests to keep the standards themselves. For example, a bill in Tennessee that’s heading to Gov. Bill Haslam. . . would stop the administration of the PARCC test for the 2014-15 school year and require the state to solicit new test proposals after that.

Maryland is now the fiscal agent for the PARCC Assessment Consortium.  While Maryland is beginning implementation of the assessments in its public schools, the General Assembly passed legislation this year to delay the use of test scores on the new student assessments for teacher evaluations.

For more information, see the full story from Education Week and these past posts on Conduit Street, Report Reviews Southern States’ Common Core Implementation, Senate Votes to Delay New Teacher Evaluations, Legislators Consider When to Use Student Assessments in Teacher Evaluations, and this information from the Maryland Department of Education.