written by Terry Miller just recently this past August. The first part of the article talks about how well students performed on the test and the huge improvement they are making over the years. The results of the test rose at least eight percent over this last year. California's top executive educator, California State Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell, visited Cleveland Elementary School in northwest Pasadena. O'Connell said, "The growth in achievement is evident among every subgroup of students. However, we must continue to pay close attention to the achievement gap that shows students of color and poverty are trailing behind their peers. He is concern for those students of the lower class and those of the African American race. O'Connell is trying to figure out a way to help this proficiency and narrow this academic chasm.

Rose Garrett writes an article called Is Standardized Testing Failing Our Kids? which is basically questioning the purpose for taking the test. It talks about how the test hurt the students who need the help the most and is adding a lot of pressure to both the students and the teachers. It states how teachers have to teach to the test instead of teaching in a way that will not end up on paper. This article says that we should have a different kind of testing that is called performance based assessments and it is based on the idea that kids should be evaluated on what they can do and not for the purpose to see how successful they are. It allows kids to be creative and to shoe us what they actually know instead of taking a test. It seems clear that a standardized test only shows wheatear a student got the question right or wrong not how well they know the material or how well they can answer a question. The author states that until we can decided what we want kids to learn than it is hard to give them a test on things they may or may not know.

The Great School Staff and its main focus in wrote testing in California on standardized testing in schools. The first part of this article talks about all the different kinds of test there are through out elementary school and high school. It examines how schools are given a target in which their student's scores should follow under. These targets are called API growth targets. After the testing is complete the schools will receive rankings comparing similar schools and also comparing schools within in state. It states that these test are mainly important for helping parents understand how well their child is learning, and also how well are schools preparing their students. The results of this test can affect the children, teachers and schools. I