There’s rumors flying around at my school that the new California state testing thing (SBAC) will be factored into our college applications/individual performances… I know state testing has never mattered in the past for individuals but do any of these rumors hold any credence whatsoever? Just wanted to double-check because I don’t really give much thought to these tests… If any CA residents could give some insight it’d be great. Thanks 
From a 2013 bulletin by the National Association for College Admission Counseling:
“At their discretion, institutions may choose to include Smarter Balanced scores among the information they consider as they make admission decisions; however, the Smarter Balanced Assessment was not designed for that purpose.”
From the Smarter Balance website:
“The Smarter Balanced assessments are not designed to serve the function of admission examinations. Use of Smarter Balanced assessment scores in admission decisions is ultimately a policy decision for higher education systems and institutions, but Smarter Balanced is not designing its assessments for this purpose.”
From this information, I doubt it. Colleges can request our scores but it seems like it’s being discouraged.
Also, according to the Smarter Balance website they’re looking at the reliability and validity of the test right now. Perhaps in a few years it will play a part in admissions, but the test is so new with not much data on it so I doubt that colleges would consider it, at least for the next few years.
Hope this helped! I myself am curious because we are apparently taking the test “for real.” I also haven’t done anything with Common Core before so I was a bit worried, but I’ve looked at the stuff that my younger brothers bring home. When it’s not super vague it’s really very easy so it should be fine.
I would expect that after the baseline is better established, that scores on the SBAC tests could be one of the (several) ways to establish that CSU students do not need remedial coursework. There was the EAP score that was part of the STAR test, so this would just be a replacement for that. Other ways of satisfying the exemption from remedial coursework at CSUs include SAT/ACT scores. So, I wouldn’t worry about it, and certainly not yet. It takes years for the UCs to make changes to their admissions requirements. If they make a change that could significantly affect kids, it will likely be for the class of 2019 or 2020+.
OK, all that said, if my school scheduled SBAC tests the week before AP tests, I’d opt out too.
http://edsource.org/2015/half-of-juniors-opt-out-of-common-core-tests-in-affluent-high-school
My son’s school is scheduled to have them the week after AP tests.