To let everybody know what exactly is going on. In Kansas the state assessment is just a part of the total process.
Every district is required to use three different measures of student achievement.
Typically those are a local assessment, a state assessment, and a nationally normed test. But, the key to all of this is local decision making. Each building and community that is served by that school is required to develop their plan for school improvement. What this means is that the state assessments mean relatively little in the decisions as to what is included in the curriculum. For most districts, the items that mean the most are the local indicators of student achievement.