Major Point #1: (from a colleague who is sitting next to me on the ACT redesign team)
- ACT is remaking their assessment to align with the questioning levels (DOK) of the SMARTER Balanced Assessment. Time constraints/lengths of assessments have not been determined but assessing claim 4 will be some form of a prompt given weeks ahead of time.
Shelby Cole - Director of Math for the SBAC -
- Going over the stuff we know from the SBAC. The focus is tying the assessment to the things they want to see as far as instruction in the classroom.
- Summative Assessment is good for a snapshot of growth from one year to the other. It could be used as a screener but it is only one-time per year
- Interim Assessments are used to give information at a different level. It will allow teacher to build assessments on specific topics using questions that are in the same style as the Summative Assessment.
- Formative Assessment section is not more tests but great resources for teachers to help define students level of performance. It goes way beyond just testing...into good practice.
- The test will be adaptive. All kids will be answering questions seeing items that are appropriate in level and difficulty for that child. The score is based on the kinds of questions the students answers correctly.
- The test is shorter than a fixed form test to get the same results.
- Performance Tasks "reflect real-world task and/or scenario-based problem.
- DCE is 100% accurate in our perception of tasks - we must make them happen regularly.
- We might be a bit more aggressive in elementary but students are handling it. Why would we back off?
- Need to be feasible for the school/classroom environment. They have also taken into account the CAREER PATHWAYS. They want the tasks to span several pathways.
- Two types of Tasks
- Evaluate and Recommend
- Write a letter to your school principal in regards to...
- Plan and Design:
- Plan a garden that....
- The emphasis on the claims - although we haven't been specific in our terminology of "claims" is right now.
- Claim 1: concepts and procedures - we are good at this one!
- Claim 2: Problem solving - doing well - for the most part
- Claim 3: Communicating Reasoning
- reasoning on a number line
- reasoning of fractions
- Does not need to be embedded into context
- This is NUMBER SENSE!
- Claim 4: Modeling and Data Analysis
- These are our situations (weak tasks).
- We need to do more with "modeling" scenarios but our analysis is strong.
- Performance Tasks:
- These are our really good tasks. Very open ended with NO scaffolding.
- Plus Standards:
- In 2015 we will not have items to assess those standards
- 2016 and beyond the plan is to have items that assess those standards. These would not be reported in the "normal" reporting method but in a different reporting feature.
- How long will the test take?
- Just math time for the total test is estimated at 1.5 hours for the performance task and about the same (could be 2 hours) for the adaptive test. The pilot versions took about 3.5 hours total time.
- There are NO calculators available prior to GRADE 6.
- Accommodations
- Universal tools are access features of the assessment that are available to all students.
- The major one for DCE is handing out scratch paper and pencils for all students. If we don't give it to them they won't use it.
- Designated Supports and Accommodations are classified as either embedded or non-embedded.
- Embedded - in the assessment
- color, masking, text to speech, language, sign-language, braille, closed captioning,
- Non-embedded - district provided
- bilingual dictionary, color contrast, color overlay, seating, calculator, read aloud, ...
- Translations: some words have a very light box that have a strong relationship to the math they need to know will not have a translation available. Other words will have a translation piece available using a "thesaurus."
- Students CAN go back into their test and review old questions. It will choose the next item based on current performance but students can change answers (highlight/flag questions they are uncomfortable with).
- Can strikethrough their answers to help narrow down/eliminate choices.
- Comment from a student.
- "On the CMP (Conneticut Mastery Test) I work and work and work and then my answer is not there. This test let me explain how I did it."
- This supports our districts focus on literacy in explaining their questions and reasoning.
- In summary: we are doing really well. This made me feel very comfortable with our direction. We need more implementation of what teachers know we should be doing. This means, unfortunately, more time for teachers to develop and more PD on what scaffolding actually does to hinder student development. For me, that means more concrete examples to give to teachers so they can see the clear distinction between a quality question and a good question that we made procedural.
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