Dive Brief:

• The Indiana State Board of Education voted unanimously to cancel its upcoming Common Core practice tests.

• Indiana students were supposed to take the CoreLink test in May, giving them a chance to become familiar with a Common Core-aligned standardized test. However, some board members worried the practice test would cause unnecessary stress. 

• Last month, Indiana became the first state to repeal its Common Core laws, and it plans to adopt a new set of benchmarks April 28. The board has decided to hold off a vote on whether or not it will continue to use the Common Core-aligned CoreLink test to measure those new standards. 

Dive Insight:

Testing for the sake of testing never makes sense, and if Indiana has no plans on even using the Common Core it makes no sense to take a practice test aligned to standards it recently dropped.

While the board still hasn’t decided if it will drop CoreLink completely or not, the fact that it can possibly be used to assess the new standards does speak to some individuals' concerns that when Indiana “dropped” the Common Core, it was more of an emblematic move than any real policy change.