Monday, March 25, 2013

Computer Adaptive Testing Meeting

I attended the Computer Adaptive Testing meeting held by USOE last week.  These are my notes.  This is the USOE website where this information is found. 

UCAS-Utah Comprehensive Accountability System
SAGE- Student Assessment of Growth and Excellence

Accountability is only as good as the assessments.

School growth score calculation:  600 total = 300 growth (200 all students + 100 below proficient) + 300 achievement (percent at or above proficient for elementary and middle / high 150 at or above proficient + 150 for graduation rate)

AIR (American Institutes for Research) will create the assessments. AIR is a non-profit company which has experience in CAT (Computer Adaptive Testing) other states. Utah will have technology enhanced, machine-scored graphic response, machine-scored natural language, and machine-scored simulations to provide immediate results.  Assessments will work on iPad.

Utah is determining the questions unique to Utah. Focus in design is on student accessibility and providing tools to enable students to show what they know. You can enter accommodations for each student.

Three parts: formative (tools for teachers), interim and summative (similar tests given at beginning, middle, and end of year), instant and detailed reporting. Only end of year is required by law. Point of interim assessments is to provide tools to help teachers know what students are learning so they can make adjustments in instruction.

Features include:  standards-based, adaptive, accessible, instant-detailed reporting, link to formative tools.

UTIPS Core system will be replaced by formative system in AIR and will have an open-source library including UTIPS questions with instructional resources. Power in the system is in teachers using formative tools to adjust teaching.

Formative system will be live fall 2013 with UTIPS items and AIR items aligned to core. Assessments teachers have made under UTIPS Core will not be available. Teachers will have to reenter these in February when formative questions go live. No beginning and mid year assessments for 2013-2014. The end of year in spring 2014 will not have instant results available and those questions will be used as the pilot. System will be fully operational in 2014-2015.

Different approach to questions. More in depth understanding.

DWA will only be done for two more years. There will be writing response items within the CAT system. The testing will not look like DWA which is not aligned to new core.

Item difficulty changes based on student answers. Want difficulty to be at about 50% correct level. Recalculates ability after each item. Will not publish percent proficient or correct, because it is meaningless. Content measured will be the same. Must teach same content to all students including resource students. Don't restrict curriculum. Hope to have only 2-3% that will top out and not have any other questions available. Need to tell students next year that the test is designed to adapt to them so they will get about 50% correct. This will be more correct for lower students and less correct answers for higher end students.

Accessibility: text-to-speech, magnification, increased font size, highlighter, answer eliminator, keyboard navigation, text-to-Braille, tactile graphics, signing type

Various reports on individual students will be available. All systems are connected: formative, interim, summative.

Demo of formative system during webinar on April 3 at this website starting at 2:00 p.m.  Archived at this website under Monthly Webinars.

Teachers can be trained as a test item writer or as a reviewer.

Combination of accountability using growth and CAT is a big deal in a positive way.

Teachers need a paradigm shift. Assessing needs to be part of instruction. Formative will be part of how we teach and deliver instruction.

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