Delaware signed up for the Smarter Balanced Assessments to promulgate its form of Common Core.  Those tests get demo’d in late May/early June this year…  Our students are guinea pigs.

Delaware contracts out to AIR or American Institutes for Research to develop, give, and grade the tests to be used to rank every student, teacher, principal, school board… Only the Secretary of Education and the Governor will not be held accountable.

AIR, the company making the test, is using that distinction to make extra money… announced that to continue the certification process, would require hardware manufacturers and operating-system developers—companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft—to pay $35,000 annually for a product to be tested for compatibility with the common-core online tests and, if approved, be included on an AIR list of supported products.

In mafia neighborhoods it used to be called extortion.

To pass muster, devices have to be able to handle test questions that involve animation, video, or drag-and-drop features, for example. They also have to be able to block access to search engines, prevent students from sharing information, and cut off any ability to capture what is being shown on the computer screen and then send it to someone else.

“Though most current operating systems are compatible with the upcoming common-core tests, Smarter Balanced wants large technology companies such as Microsoft and Google to get certified. “We’re encouraging them to join so we’ll be sure we can support them in the future”, said the executive vice president of AIR,

For assistive-technology manufacturers, the benefit of the certification process is that companies will be able to assure districts that the devices will meet the tests’ requirements,

This is simply a money making opportunity.  The other consortium, the PARCC is not pre-approving for $35,000. It is leaving it up to the market place to solve…. It plans to simply publish a list of requirements that must be used…

Those companies that sell adaptive solutions for disabled test taking, instead insist that Smarter Balanced should be reaching out to these companies to make sure its tests and the adaptive equipment are compatible….

At stake is whether the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act should take precedence over concerns about the digital security of the common-core tests.

Last fiscal year Delaware cut 25 checks to AIR amounting to $8,500,679.87….

Wouldn’t that money have been much better spent on something else?

It is incidents exactly like this one which add gasoline to the fire that all Common Core is intended to do, is put Delaware’s tax dollars into the pockets of those running sham corporations….. Your kids will get failing scores, so the executives at AIR can collect $35,000… well before we even pass “GO”…….