Slide 1
Currently trying to support mac 10.10. Please contact ESD if you are planning on using windows 8.1 touchscreen computers.
Slide 2
Brad: The extended assessment standards setting opportunity will be open June 15-17 at U of O. Looking for 51 SPED, math and ELD specialists for new linking. If you have folks who are interested in participating please forward information to Brad.
Thank you for forwarding the kindergarten teacher voice survey. We have had around 300 responses already.
Michelle is busy but we are still recruiting for the field test. Specifically kinder and 1st grade. Still looking for other grades but we are focusing on lower grades.
Registration for field test is closed temporarily as Queststar downloads information. Registration will open next week December 15 and will be open till January 15. We encourage all districts to participate so all students can experience the new items. We are recruiting four groups: current English Learners, former English Learners (title 3 monitoring status), Fluent potential English Language Learners, whose surveys indicated that they might be EL, English only no potential for English Learners status students are allowed to participate. Many have wanted native speakers to take the ELPA and had this request many times. Please sign up your native English speakers for this field test and we will have the data that we have been waiting for.
Districts have requested that the English only students take the ELPA in the past, like mentioned. So ODE hopes that ELPA takers can be joined by their non EL peers during this field test. Dates: February 2 to March 31 for grades 9-12;Feb 16- March 31 for grades k-8. If there are any questions you can visit the website ELPA21.org or email Kathleen directly and she will forward it to the appropriate person. Thank you.
Reminder, submit questions in the comments and we will address those at the end.
Slide 3
Technology updates. Email went out about Mac secure browser 7.2 vs Mac secure browser 7.0. The issue that was resolved by the new browser was the pausing issues for text-to-speech. So if you are having students that are using “Text-to-speech” as a designated support during testing you will want to uninstall the 7.0 and install 7.2. We are testing Mac 10.10 currently to see if it is compatible. Once it has been checked, the 7.2 should be compatible with Mac 10.10. We are also having our vendor develop an IOS 8 support app provision through the app store. That should be available before the testing window which is January 6, 2015. Also to clear up some questions: Stylus are NOT required for testing. Students do not have to have the ELPA headsets for the Text to Speech function. Earbuds/headphones are fine. Thank you for submitting the district technology capacity survey. We had 114 districts respond and we noticed that 54% have had their students take the practice test, which means that 46% have not had their students take the practice test. We highly recommend that all students take the Practice Test before SB testing begins March 10, 2015.
Slide 4
Before that ends, Rachel, I am working on a checklist for you to share with your IT managers and this list is really above and beyond the students taking the tests. A brief exercise for the DTC and IT manager to sit down and go through to help you be more confident that your tech is working and will be working for the SB assessment. We will have it done soon. Download and launch secure browser. Same browser for ELPA, OAKS and SB. Second thing. Run the diago in the low left (button) on the student practice test. Then select a practice test, have you run through a math PT to check text to speech, audio and ASL is working. Next, we’ll have you go into an ELPA and make sure that the listening and speaking audio checks are working. These are the capacity breakers and make sure that these work and we will be confident that things will work in March.
Slide 5
Bryan Toller
We wanted to introduce a professional development opportunity. This is a brief overview (listed in AA update). ODE partnered with OEIB, West Ed and SCALE and will be offering free, face to face, 2 day professional development for educators on assessment literacy. Specifically, educators can do hand scoring of SB Performance tasks and Constructed response items. And they will include how to deliver Performance assessments in your classroom. The participates will be able to look at secure SB items. They will also be provided at the conferences meals, travel stipends for those who travel >90 miles. Conferences: Jan 26 and 27 Portland, Feb 5 and 6 Roseburg, Feb 12 and 13 Pendleton. The space is limited and only open to 120 participates and break out to Math elementary Math secondary ELA elementary ELA secondary. When you apply through the Survey money Link you will have to indicate which session you would like to attend. There will be on going professional development. WestEd will be conducting a 5 week virtual learning community about Performance assessment. Be on the lookout at AA update for fine details for recruitment.
Slide 6
Begin Q and A
In chat so far:
DTC will receive emailed copy of power point?
Yes it will be either in an email or on the website. Also we will be listening to the recording and taking notes so we can write down the questions and answers.
ELPA field test: We have a lot more English native speakers, should we limit that number?
Kathleen: I’m going to say the sky is the limit because we have lots for the field test and pass this question along to Michelle and Martha. If they can coach you on grade level that are most needed. Please do sign up your native English speakers
Test Administration manual: classroom activity and performance task should not be done on the same day
DB: so what the guidance that we have been given by SB is that the ELA classroom activity cannot be administered the same day as that student begins the Performance task. But on the math side that would be allowable, but it is recommended to do it day prior. We will contact SB to clarify this issue about whether or not the guidance to us is a rand and fast rule. We will have an answer out to everybody early next week.
The next question: Test specs for Chromebooks indicates that it will support version 31-35 operating system. A district is currently using version 38. When will we find out what versions beyond version 35 will be supported?
Rachel: If you are looking at test specification that you are looking at the Oregon versions of Tech plans and not SB tech plans because we are in the process of testing out newer versions, including 38. As you know google pushes out new updates about every 6 weeks so we are continuing to keep up with each new version that comes out. Please look at the Oregon tech plans not the SB plans.
Are there going to be any videos on log ins, set up or entering information into TIDE for SB. Test coordinators would love to have this to share with their TA.
Rachel: if you go on to the OAKS portal, all of the modules that SB created for the field test are listed there under Resources. We have updated these modules to reflect the newest test and our Oregon shell. Yes, you have those PowerPoints on how to set up a test session. We are also in the process of filming live video on how to set up a test session in a practice test with TIDE, TA interface and the student interface.
Assessment literacy/ professional development that Bryan discussed
First one was about the site.
Derek: there was a question about whether or not if we could stretch those sites out across the state. Unfortunately there is a limited amount of funding that goes with those training that are really being coordinated by another organization so we had limits on where we could offer those trainings. We had to make some hard decisions on where to hold those trainings.
Will those 5 week virtual trainings be open to all educators or only the120 that are recruited?
Bryan: the virtual learning is created to support those who participated in the training. One thing to note though is that those trainings focus on sharing info so those folks that are trained will have modules that they can share with their districts, besides the secure information. The virtual training community is designed just for the participates.
Regarding training for ELPA21 field test. Would there be any additional training beyond the ELPA are required for ELPA21?
The answer is yes. There is additional training required for the ELPA21 field test. That training will be necessary for TAs.
Attendance for Classroom Activity and how should they administer PT if student is absent for Classroom activity.
We will have a promising practices for the classroom activity doc coming out this week. I think the best guidance to offer should be that we shouldn’t administer the PT to students until they have completed the CA. If they have students who are having a hard time getting through the CA we should find a way for that student to experience it still. We will need to have some conversations about this issue with the team and then get back to you saying Yes or No. The team is reminding me that this would be actually falling under the title of an impropriety.
How are the classroom activities going to be assigned?
We will be working with AIR to decide how the Classroom activities and PA will be assigned. This will be a random assignment at the student level as each Classroom activity support 5-7 several Performance Tasks. So within a grade in a school all those students would be receiving a Performance task that is covered by the Classroom Activity. We have to wait for SB to deliver all of the items and Performance tasks to AIR before we can start assigning. So that work is scheduled for December and early January. Once it is done, we will produce the files needed and place them in the OAKS portal.
To clarify, every grade has a Classroom Activity that is associated with it. Within a school at a specific grade, every grade will have the same activity but different Performance task. That should give you some flexibility on how to help absent students.
When are the live videos going to be released?
By the end of next week.
What about AB scheduling? If they cannot do the performance task the same day they may time out, since there are only 10 calendar days to complete those.
I think Derek addressed this, we will talk to SB about this. I was surprised to see that ELA is specifically listed on the table to not be performed the same day whereas math could start on the same day. So we put a question into them, what is the difference? We will follow up and give you an answer. This may be something we could have control over. I don’t think we would object to the students beginning the performance task the same day as the classroom activity.
During the DTC training there were questions about the Classroom Activity. Have those questions been mostly addressed and if so where can we find the answers?
Derek, I don’t know specifically what all of the unknowns were but as I mentioned early we have created that promising practices document specifically to contextualize the Classroom Activity. We are hoping his will help folks with scheduling issues for the Classroom Activity and other things associated with the CA. We are projected to have this document out by the end of this week so that will be a fluid document, so if there are questions that are not on there we can update it accordingly.
If students only complete the complete the computer test and not the classroom activity, are they still considered “participants”?
Ok, so how we are counting participate is still open. I can tell you that the consortium is trying to come to a consensus about how participation will be calculated specifically relative to how the consortium produces it’s reports. Every state has the ability to make their own decisions on how they calculate participate. In talking to Jon Wiens about this, we will have to make some decisions about if we want to be closer to where smarter balanced is landing. There is an open vote that consortium states are doing right now to land a decision there. I would characterize it as fairly different to how we have calculated participation here in the past. Bottom line: We have to decide if we want to amend how we have been reporting participation to align with smarter Balanced approach or if we want to keep it the same. If we do amend it to align, there will be more steps that a few questions on the CAT and ACT. Again that is where the consortium is trying to come to a consensus because each state has a very different way of how to calculate this and each has deep philosophical opinions on how this should be done.
What is the status of the ODE project to compile math and ELA samples that can be used to fulfil ES requirements?
Derek: the status is that ken and Bryan are leading groups of educators in creating the first batch of reading, writing and math tasks. They are pretty close to having the first 10-15 done. We are working internally with the IT folks on how to create a distribution center for those. You may have heard us mention “the portal”. Development has been delayed, so we are going to find another way to distribute these. This may be through the secure DTC site, and there will be trainings on how to access those. Mid-January seems to be the launch date. We have not sent out official communications about this because we wanted to make sure that we can deliver by that time. We will provide training on where and how to get to those.
How will classroom activities will be distributed in mixed grade classes
Derek: that will be a decision you can make at the local level so within the promising practices document we have addressed this issue. So you will have to follow local policy on if you want to include both grades or a different route.
Can the classroom activity be recorded and digitally distributed to students who are absent.
Yes.
How will we manage students who transfer during the testing window, are their performance task assignments flexible or will they update?
We need to work through those details. The best answer right now is if we end up with students that are caught in the backwash in this situation and the best option would be to retest. We would have to work with that on a case by case basis.
What is the logic on starting the ELA on a different day than the Classroom Activity.
As ken mentioned before we have asked SB and have not received a clear answer. After this phone call I will try to contact them again about this issue.
When will schools receive the student score on the SB assessments, after the students have completed the test?
Five to six weeks. We are feeling optimistic.
Will partial tests be scored?
That is kind of wrapped in the participation conversation so we don’t have a firm answer for a 4 to 6 weeks. We are still having conversations with AIR. We are not sure what that is going to look like.
Is there an estimated time on the participation definition that we discussed earlier?
At the consortium level the decision has been difficult to build consensus about. Tony seems confident that they are closer to making a decision. Clearly this is an issue that you are all wanting more firm information on. So I will talk with Jon today about what his timeline looks like for getting the accountability team together to make a determination about this issue.
There is confusion around the score reports for smarter balanced and some parts of the tests would produce instant scores.
There are no parts of the tests that will produce instant scores.
Are first year ELL student exempt from taking the ELA as long as they are taking the ELPA?
Yes.
If those 5 to 6 weeks are after student completes the test?
Yes. To clarify there may be several days between the CAP portion and the performance task and that task may take a few sessions to complete that portion. Air cannot do scoring until the student has completed the entire test, so that would be 5 to 6 weeks after each aspect of the test has been completed.
Will those scores be rolled out as they are scored or would they be rolled out in batches.
I need to talk to Jon about this, though I believe they were looking at rolling them out as possible. They are still working on some details about this though because we are not sure what QA aspects need to be in place here when we receive the scores. So it could be batches.
Will there be separate score for reading and writing?