Andrew Latham, Program Director of WestEd’s Assessment & Standards Development Services, recently spoke at the Education Writers Association (EWA) National Seminar, where he passed out sample test questions from the actual Smarter Balanced and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers (PARCC) tests that students took in the spring.

Chalkbeat Indiana’s Shaina Cavazos documented the session in EWA’s blog, The Education Reporter. In “Common Core, Up Close and Personal,” she shares the reporters’ conversation with Latham as they examined the test questions.

“Assessment, ultimately, when it’s serving instruction, is nirvana,” says Latham in the article. “[Students] also learn by doing the performance tasks and the teachers get an idea of how to teach them.”

Read the post.