Dive Brief:

• On Wednesday, Washington state’s board of education determined that students will not have to be college and career ready, according to their scores on new Common Core-aligned tests, in order to graduate.
• The state has adopted Smart Balanced tests, and according to the exam's developers, a score of 3 or 4 indicates students are prepared to take on college and career.
• Washington students will only have to score above a 2.5 in order to graduate from high school.

Dive Insight:

As more states work on rolling out Common Core-linked exams, the question of setting so-called “cut scores” is a relatively obscure one — other issues like test length and difficulty typically get more attention. But the implications of where cut scores are set for students and schools are weighty, especially in places where the tests will determine things like a student’s ability to graduate. The process of setting a cut score involves weighing factors such as how many students are expected to pass, how students perform on the test, and more technical elements of testing. But the decision can be political, too, as people grapple with how much to trust test scores and where to set the bar for success.

In the case of Washington state, that work was complicated by the fact that there was limited data on how high schoolers did on the tests. A large number of the state’s high school juniors opted out of exams this spring, so the state had to rely on other methods to make the cut scores. Board members cautioned that the current bar could very well be temporary and won’t go into effect as a graduation requirement for several years.