CA L I F O R N I A S TA N DA R D S T E S T

Released Test Questions

Earth Science

Introduction - Earth Science

The following released test questions are taken from the Earth Science Standards Test. This test is one of the California Standards Tests administered as part of the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program under policies set by the State Board of Education. All questions on the California Standards Tests are evaluated by committees of content experts, including teachers and administrators, to ensure their appropriateness for measuring the California academic content standards in Earth Science. In addition to content, all items are reviewed and approved to ensure their adherence to the principles of fairness and to ensure no bias exists with respect to characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and language. This document contains released test questions from the California Standards Test forms in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. First on the pages that follow are lists of the standards assessed on the Earth Science Test. Next are released test questions. Following the questions is a table that gives the correct answer for each question, the content standard that each question is measuring, and the year each question last appeared on the test. It should be noted that asterisked (*) standards found in the Science Content Standards for California Public Schools, Kindergarten through Grade 12, are not assessed on the California Standards Tests in Science and, therefore, are not represented in these released test questions. The following table lists each reporting cluster, the number of items that appear on the exam, and the number of released test questions that appear in this document. The released test questions for Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Physics are the same test questions found in different combinations on the