In this commentary piece she lays out why the Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC) testing system fails to provide accurate and useable
information about student performance, why it should not be used as part of an effective teacher evaluation system and why Connecticut's elected officials should defund the SBAC testing madness and use those funds to help address Connecticut's budget crisis.
The online reporting system will provide preliminary
information about student performance, including average scores for groups of students by grade level, school, and district.
Mathematics results will include
information about student performance in problem solving, using concepts and procedures, and communicating mathematical reasoning.
In earlier grades, word identification fluency (WIF) is also a strong predictor of early reading ability, but again, not a perfect one (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Compton, 2004; Schatschneider, 2006) This means that screening instruments that rely on single measures such as ORF or WIF will provide fairly good
information about student performance, but alone they can't provide information at levels needed for an effective RTI process (> 90 % sensitivity; > 80 % specificity).
Indeed, more testing can lead to inaccurate and misleading
information about student performance.
Some that resonate with me more than others: a point - in - time assessment provides limited
information about student performance (agreed!
We can and should report
information about student performance in areas like attendance and effort, but we can report it separately from academic achievement (O'Connor, 2007; Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006).
Warren Fletcher, teachers union president, said that data give teachers more useful
information about student performance on specific skills.
Such screenings provide data that are used alongside other
information about student performance to help teachers know which students need additional instruction.
Collecting multiple sources of
information about student performance is a regular (even daily) school activity.
Importantly, all FastBridge Learning assessments are designed to be used within a team - based problem - solving model that considers multiple methods and sources of
information about student performance.
Benchmarks and norms are designed to provide different types of
information about student performance.
In this era of data - driven instruction, school leaders are called upon to integrate many types of
information about student performance.
A second key to using student data to improve learning outcomes is to be sure that teams review «system» level
information about student performance.
Administrators can leverage new
information about student performance on standards well before the state exam, while there is time to act.
The process provides teachers with real - time
information about student performance and, importantly, frees their time to support individual and small groups of students.
8) Americans need better, more timely
information about student performance.
Smarter Balanced is grounded in the notion that putting good
information about student performance in the hands of teachers can have a profound impact on instruction and — as a result — on student learning.
While allowing for a range of NNRs to satisfy the ESA testing requirement provides
information about student performance, NNRs do not drive school - level content decisions the way criterion - referenced statewide assessments can, which research suggests can dissuade private school leaders from participating in education choice programs.
Currently, a simple Google search pulls up a wealth of
information about student performance in one's local neighborhood school, truly a revolution in transparency.
The states can get
some information about student performance through the NAEP tests, and local districts can find out how they are doing relative to other districts in the state through state accountability measures.
Not exact matches
The focus groups also probed where
students received
information about different careers, and how much they weighted their
performance in math and science classes in considering different career paths.
What's important is that
students take assessments aligned to their state standards so that parents and teachers received valuable and honest
information about their academic
performance.»
In one study we are are working with our colleague in the music department, Lisa Margulis, to learn
about the effects of
information in program notes on
students» experiences during school field trips to see
performances.
In place of a school report that judges and reports
student performance two or three times each year, this
information might be provided on a more ongoing basis — perhaps with the assistance of technology — and form the basis of two - way (or three - way) conversations
about student progress.
The NEPC report uses badly flawed measures of school
performance that provide little
information about how much
students learn as a result of attending K12 schools.
The database includes
information about each
student's classroom teacher in a given year, which allows us to estimate how much the
student learned in that year and to connect that
information to such professional characteristics as teacher certification, acquisition of a master's degree, teacher experience, teacher test
performance, and the specific school of education the teacher had attended within Florida, if the teacher had attended one of the eleven schools for which adequate numbers of teacher observations were available.
One indication comes from the
information in our results
about the gains in
performance made by schools where the
student - faculty ratio decreased over this same period.
A recent study showed that when teachers get good
information about ADHD, the
students with the disorder show improved behavior and
performance.
Our study has drawn on
information about the mathematics and science
performance of
students in many countries during the past four decades.
... You'll see the rollout of a statewide data system that will give a lot more useful
information to teachers and principals
about student performance and a lot more useful data for policymakers.
Criteria - referenced self - assessment is a process during which
students collect
information about their own
performance or progress; compare it to explicitly stated criteria, goals, or standards; and revise accordingly.
Data systems, which are ways of collecting and tracking
information about school,
student, and teacher
performance, are key elements in driving the Obama administration's reform effort.
Students become concerned
about creating the best product or
performance they can when the stakes are high — when there is an audience to entertain, paying customers to satisfy, families relying on the accuracy of their
information to keep themselves safe, and so on.
Students must be given access to information about their performance... At the broadest level, students need to know if they actually have mastered the material
Students must be given access to
information about their
performance... At the broadest level,
students need to know if they actually have mastered the material
students need to know if they actually have mastered the material or not.
Collectively, the 12 Design Challenges seek to attract the most talented
students to teaching, providing them and their practicing peers with support and actionable
information about what good teaching looks like; ensuring introductory and ongoing training that provides them with the requisite skills and knowledge for classroom and
student success; identifying certification methods that are rigorous and
performance - based; and forging new career pathways where master teachers both anchor teacher training and ongoing knowledge development.
Above all, the law's requirement that
students be tested annually in reading and math in grades 3 - 8 and once in high school has provided parents, teachers, and other citizens with detailed
information about students»
performance in these foundational subjects — and therefore the extent to which they have mastered skills that are prerequisites for other educational goals.
Since states using PARCC have discretion in setting their
performance levels, it is important for policymakers in these states to note that PARCC chose appropriate thresholds for deeming a
student «college - ready,» giving
students good
information about whether they are prepared to succeed in college courses.
While we lack comparable indicators of the public's knowledge of
student performance from earlier periods, it seems that the accountability movement has succeeded in ensuring citizens have good
information about key academic outcomes.
For example, consideration could be given to providing opportunities for
students to work collaboratively on meaningful, complex problems that require the application of learning from a number of disciplines, and then using
performances on these cross-disciplinary problems as sources of
information about the development of
students» general capabilities.
provide parents with user - friendly and helpful
information about how their
students are doing now, what the long - term trends are, and guidance on how parents can help
students improve
performance;
If CCSS is fully implemented as proposed by its most ardent adherents, including the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, it can be expected to alter the
information Americans have
about student performance at their local schools.
Other groups were given specific
information about the
performance of
students in their local public schools.
In the absence of any
information about local
student performance, 64 percent of Americans support CCSS and only 13 percent oppose them.
Policymakers need to think in a more nuanced way
about how
students, parents, and teachers use the
information embedded in these
performance labels.»
At the same time, policymakers should boost federal research and development (R&D) investments to provide state leaders with more and better
information about international best practices, and should help states develop streamlined assessment strategies that facilitate cost - effective international comparisons of
student performance.
It is also
about what
information the admissions office needs to predict
student performance.
We surveyed over 1,100 entering college freshmen, majoring in business and engineering at a public university in the US, and combined this
information with administrative data to create a comprehensive data set that, in addition to the usual academic
performance data, cognitive ability measures, and demographics, also included measures of non-cognitive skills, personality traits, and
student expectations
about college success.
Under both NCLB and the new ESSA federal laws, states are required to provide annual report cards on
student performance in schools and districts, and the federal government has since provided grants to all states to develop longitudinal
student data systems, in part to give parents and policymakers richer
information about student achievement.
«A «dashboard» accountability system will include important
information about school and
student performance, but it is unclear how it will be measured and incorporated into an overall measure of school quality.»