Changing its earlier position, the California Department of Education will release Smarter Balanced test scores next month and not wait to incorporate them into other data as planned, a department official said Tuesday.
“There is no reason to withhold the data,” Malika Vella, deputy superintendent of the initiatives branch of the department, said Tuesday morning on KPCC Public Radio’s show “Air Talk” in Los Angeles.
The department had told EdSource earlier this month in response to a public records request that the data was not complete and would be held until later in the year, when it would be released as part of a dashboard that would include other, holistic, student indicators, such as absentee rates.
The data is expected to show pandemic-related declines in student achievement.
Vella’s public announcement means the data will be released prior to voters going to the polls on Nov. 8. They will be choosing between incumbent Tony Thurmond and challenger Lance Christensen in the nonpartisan race for state superintendent of public instruction, as well as hundreds of local school board races across the state.
In a letter to school superintendents dated Friday, department officials wrote that they still hoped to release the test scores with other information.
“To the extent possible, our intent remains to also release finalized California School Dashboard data to allow for a more holistic review as soon as possible,” the letter states.
Vella’s announcement came after EdSource pushed back by reporting on the department’s delay in a letter from its attorney, who challenged its reasoning.
“… The CDE cannot identify any ‘public’ interest in non-disclosure that could justify its denial position, let alone an interest that ‘clearly outweighs’ the substantial public interest in access to this information,” the attorney, Duffy Carolan, wrote.
Since California first released Smarter Balanced scores in 2015, the Education Department has consistently released them separately and sooner than the other dashboard data. Dates ranged from the last week in August through the first week in October. The exception was the 2020-21 school year, when results were released in January 2022 with dashboard indicators.
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