Core Components of the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium:

ASummary of Core Components

The SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium is one of the two multi-state consortia awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Education to develop an assessment system based on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). By December 2011, all Consortium member states must adopt the CCSS, which specify college and career expectations as well as the knowledge and skills required at each grade level to meaningfully demonstrate growth toward these end-of-high school expectations. The Consortium is deeply committed to ensuring that the intellectual integrity of the CCSS are embedded in instruction and assessment and that all States’ students, regardless of disability, language, or subgroup status, have adequate opportunity to learn essential content and skills and show what they know and can do during content area testing.

The Consortium’s overarching goal is to ensure that all students leave high school prepared for postsecondary success in college or a careerthrough a planned sequence of educational experiences and opportunities. To meet its goal, with support from institutions of higher education (IHEs) and workplace representatives, the Consortium is developing a set of strategically selected measurement tools, each designed to serve specific purposes. The core components of this coherent system are (1) adaptive summative assessments, (2) interim assessments, and (3) formative tools and processes, with associated research-supported, instructionally-sensitive resources and professional development opportunities. Together, these three components will support student progress toward college and career readiness and provide student-level data throughout the instructional year to inform and guide instruction, interventions, and professional development. A comprehensive communication network and innovative reporting system will enable Consortium efforts to build a supportive environment for effective, high-quality instruction across classrooms, schools, districts, and states.

The assessments in this system capitalize on existing and emerging technologies to provide accurate measurement of individual student achievement and growth across the full range of student performance. Each assessment relies on a variety of item types (i.e., selected-response items, constructed-response items, technology-enhanced items, and performance events) to measure the full range of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics, with an emphasis on problem solving, analysis, synthesis, communication, and critical thinking. In addition, Consortium assessments will include performance events to ensurethat students’ knowledge and skillsare measured against the full range of the CCSS, including those standards that traditionally have been difficult to measure on standardized assessments. These efforts will support the Consortium’s mission to evaluate students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills that generalize and can transfer to higher education and multiple work domains. The measures in this system will emphasize deep knowledge of core concepts and ideas within and across the disciplines, thereby laying the groundwork for assessments based on complex performances as well as on understanding of important concepts, facts, and skills.

Each of the core componentsin the Consortium’s assessment system is described in greater detail in the table below.

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SUMMARY OF SMARTER BALANCED ASSESSMENT SYSTEMCORE COMPONENTS

SBAC COMPONENT / REQUIRED? / DESCRIPTION
Computer Adaptive Summative Assessments / YES, by all member States in 2014-15 /
  • Used for accountability purposes and aligned to the CCSS standards in ELA and mathematics
  • Administered to students in grades 3–8 and grade 11 within 12 weeks of the end of the instructional year
  • Designed to (1) measure students’ progress toward college- and career-readiness, both in terms of achievement at one point in time and growth over time, and (2) provide efficient, reliable, and valid information across the full range of achievement
  • Capitalize on strengths of computer adaptive testing (CAT), i.e., precise measurement and quick turnaround time for results with a minimum of testing time
  • Item pool to include selected-response, technology-enhanced constructed-response, and extended constructed-response items
  • Item pool also will include computer-delivered performance events that take 1-2 class periods to complete and provide a measure of the student’s ability to integrate knowledge and skills across multiple standards; students in grades 3–8 will participate in up to 2 events in each content area; high school students will engage in up to six performance events by grade 11 in each content area, which states may choose to distribute across grades 9-11
  • To allow for timely turn-around of results, selected-response items will be scored via automated scoring; most of the selected response will be scored using artificial intelligence (AI); teachers will score performance events, with an anticipated turn-around time of two-weeks
  • Scale scores will be a composite based on the score from the selected response items and performance events
  • Performance standards will be set using a combination of empirical data from state longitudinal data systems and expert panels of educators from K-12 and higher education
  • Paper-and-pencil option will be offered for a limited time (three years); this test must be administered during a limited window at the end of the school year; comparability between the paper option and the CAT will be established during standard setting.

Computer Adaptive Interim Assessments / NO /
  • Used to inform and guide progress toward college- and career-readiness throughout the year with more finely grained information than can be provided by the summative assessment
  • Grounded in cognitive development theory about how learning progresses within and across grades and how college- and career-readiness emerges over time
  • Results can be used formatively and diagnostically by teachers to develop targeted instructional strategies aimed at addressing specific gaps in understanding
  • Item pool will contain the same types of items and performance events as the summative pool and will include released summative assessment items
  • Results will be reported on the same scale as the summative assessments so students, teachers, and parents have mid-year or mid-course information about the degree to which students are on track to college- and career-readiness
  • Teachers can select item sets that provide focused measurement of specific content clusters embedded in the CCSS; item sets can be administered at various points within the instructional year to support effective instructional decision-making at the school, classroom, and student levels
  • Teachers will be involved in developing, reviewing, and scoring constructed response items and performance events as a professional development tool to enhance their capacity to evaluate student work aligned to the CCSS, interpret score reports, and use I/B data formatively to improve instruction and increase student learning
  • Interim assessments for high school grades will be available for clusters of standards aligned to specific coursework.

Formative Tools and Processes / NO /
  • Tools, measures, and strategies that are used to collect evidence about and from students during the course of instruction
  • Designed to support teachers’ ongoing adjustment to CCSS-based instruction using feedback from students so that changes can be made to support student learning
  • Developed and used on a daily basis throughout the school year
  • Instructionally-sensitive tools and processes that enable differentiation of instruction
  • May be used by teachers to diagnose a student’s learning needs, estimate a group’s knowledge level prior to instruction, check for misconceptions, provide evidence of progress toward learning goals, and support the evaluation of the effectiveness of an instructional strategy or program
  • Consortium will provide additional related support to teachers through delivery of focused professional development services and promotion of promising research-supported resources and materials (including model curriculum units based on the CCSS); these efforts are intended to effect improvement in instructional practices by helping teachers and administrators effectively use results from SBAC assessments and build their capacity to collect and use data formatively at the classroom level to improve teaching and increase learning

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