A group of 31 states, including Utah, has won a $160 million stimulus grant to overhaul the way schools test students, the U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday.

Starting in 2014, students in Utah and a number of other states will take computer-adaptive tests up to twice a year, possibly along with other assessments designed to help teachers better shape instruction. Computer-adaptive tests change in difficulty as students take them to help pinpoint strengths and weaknesses.

The main assessments will replace Utah’s current end-of-year tests, Criterion-Referenced Tests (CRTs), said Judy Park, state associate superintendent. And the assessments will reflect new common standards in language arts and math that many states, including Utah, have already promised to implement.

“It will give Utah the opportunity to have a really, really fabulous assessment system,” said Park, who is also co-chairing the executive committee of the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium of states that won the money. She said the tests will give teachers immediate feedback they can use to improve instruction and will provide more detailed information for parents about their children’s progress.

But Sharon Gallagher-Fishbaugh, Utah Education Association (UEA) president, said she has mixed feelings about the impending changes.

For example, she’s excited that the system will give teachers tools to improve formative assessments, which are informal tests and quizzes teachers use in their normal instruction. States and/or districts will also have the option of giving computer-adaptive benchmark tests, which measure students’ progress, several times a year.

“What that does is it guides and informs instruction in the classroom,” Gallagher-Fishbaugh said of the formative assessments. “That piece of it is absolutely very, very helpful. We have long been saying that’s the kind of assessment we need in order to look at how students are doing, not just from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, but periodically throughout the year.”

But she said she’s concerned about how the state will fund implementation of the new tests, and she has questions about how test results might be tied to educator evaluations. Park said whether that will happen has not yet been totally decided.

And Park said Thursday it has yet to be decided exactly how the state will pay for implementing the tests, which is not included in the grant. For example, schools will need enough computers to give adaptive tests possibly several times throughout the year. She said some funding may come from money now going toward current assessments. She said Utah could also opt not to participate in all the new assessments, depending on what the state can afford. About 80 percent of Utah students now take CRTs on computers.

“There are going to have to be some choices,” Park said.

Gallagher-Fishbaugh said she also worries about schools continuing to be held accountable based mainly on the results of one test.

“Children learn in different ways,” Gallagher-Fishbaugh said. “There are many different modes and methods to test a child’s knowledge, not just a one-shot, one-test, one-day kind of approach.”

And she expressed concern over putting too much emphasis on testing.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, however, said Thursday the new system will not lead to more testing. Both he and Park said it will instead replace current tests with better, more effective ones.

Duncan on Thursday praised the consortium’s plan along with the plan of another group of states, which won $170 million to implement a different type of assessment system. That system will test students’ ability to read complex text, complete research projects, speak in the classroom, listen and work with digital media. It will also replace the one end-of-year accountability test with a series of tests throughout the year.

Duncan said the new systems will be a big help to teachers, kids and parents.