“We’re seeing the early glimmers of a bigger fight,” said Frederick M. Hess, an education scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “The real question is if states can keep those concerns isolated.”

Field testing takes two forms. There are field-test questions included in the regular exams taken each spring, which make up as much as 25 percent of a test (New York officials would not release a precise figure for this year’s exams). And there are stand-alone tests devoted exclusively to trying out questions for future exams. Those are the ones coming in June; last year they were administered at more than 1,000 schools in New York City, during a 40-minute exam period.

Field-test questions have been a staple of standardized exams for generations. Most major tests, like Advanced Placement and the SAT, include items that do not count and are included simply to gauge whether the questions are worth using in the future.

The field-test questions can flag various issues, like the presence of arcane vocabulary, confusing instructions or poorly drawn diagrams. If a question proves to be too difficult, or seems to stump a particular demographic group, test makers often send the item back to the drawing board.

In the public education system, field testing has come under more intense scrutiny because state officials have a hand in designing the exams, and parents and teachers routinely complain about the series of tests children face.

With the debut of the Common Core standards, several states have already thrown out old exams and built new ones. Others are awaiting the creation of a national test in 2015, to be overseen by a consortium of states known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

New York was one of the first states to align its tests with the standards. The state introduced tougher exams in math and English this spring, to mixed reviews. Individual scores are used to determine whether students advance to the next grade; education officials expect the overall average to plummet.