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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — About 300,000 public school students are taking tests this week tied to the Common Core education standards without the boycotts or heated political rhetoric that marked the testing last year.
Hollis Milton, president of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents and West Feliciana Parish schools superintendent, told the Advocate (http://bit.ly/1SFmi50 ) there's "an overall calmer environment" for testing this year.
Most students in third grade through eighth grade will spend parts of Monday through Thursday on the exams — called LEAP 2016 — to test their knowledge of math, reading and writing. The results, due in July, are supposed to allow comparisons with 10 other states.
The tests look slightly different after lawmakers last year limited the questions from a Common Core-affiliated consortium to just under half the exam. But what students are asked isn't expected to change much.
"I don't think you will see tremendous differences between last year's assessments and this year's assessments because the standards are the same standards," said Rebecca Kockler, assistant superintendent of academic content for the state Department of Education.
Louisiana's top school board earlier this year recommended changing about 20 percent of the state's education standards. Those plans are still under review and at least a year away from changing test content.
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