Starting in 2014, some students will take 3 standardized tests per year

For most students in Illinois, spring is a crucial time.

That's when most students in grades three and up have to take a state-mandated standardized test.

Starting in the 2014-15 school year, students in some grades will have to take at least three tests to measure their progress through the year.

State Superintendent Chris Koch, Illinois' top education official, outlined efforts to add more assessments at a Thursday forum at Elgin Community College.

The idea behind the additional exams is to help teachers address students' weaknesses during the school year rather than simply assessing knowledge at the end of the year.

"The goal is that we'll no longer have a single assessment but a 'through-course' assessment," Koch said at the fall meeting of the Alliance for College Readiness. "We're not just going to be asking about knowledge; we're going to try to measure the application of knowledge."

The push for more assessments will go hand-in-hand with efforts to tie student achievement data in part to teacher evaluations, according to Koch.

"We are going to be able to connect teachers and administrators to student achievement," Koch said.

To address teachers' concerns that they may be penalized for teaching underprivileged students, or students who are already falling behind state standards, Koch said the teacher accountability initiative would be based on a "student growth model."

That means schools would measure students' achievement over time and try to determine if students did better or worse than they would have done had they not been taught by a certain teacher.

Some school districts in the suburbs have begun doing their own testing over various points of the school year in order to measure students' progress. Meanwhile, tying teachers' evaluations to students' progress, in a "pay for performance" model, has met both support and opposition in the suburbs.

The Alliance for College Readiness includes ECC and the four school districts that send graduates to the college: Elgin Area School District U-46, Community Unit District 300, St. Charles Unit District 303 and Central Community Unit District 301.

The goal of the alliance is to ensure students in the four feeder districts are prepared for college and do not have to take remedial coursework before starting college. Members meet twice a year.