State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced that nearly 500,000 California students took California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) tests on Tuesday, May 9, the highest number of students testing simultaneously during the 2017 spring testing season.

“We’re in the third year of administering these state-of-the-art assessments, and the capacity of our system and our schools to efficiently administer these tests increases every year,” Torlakson said.

“Our students and families are the ultimate winners here. The information from these tests will help our schools refine their teaching, improve learning and better prepare our students for success.”

The CAASPP assessments in English language arts/literacy and mathematics are given each spring to students in grades three through eight and grade eleven.

As of May 10, more than 2.7 million students statewide started a summative assessment in English language arts/literacy or mathematics. Participation peaked on May 9 with 495,463 students testing at one time.

The online tests are computer-adaptive, which means the tests change in real time depending on how students are performing. A student doing well will see increasingly challenging and more difficult questions; a struggling test taker will see easier questions in an attempt to more precisely measure the student’s knowledge.