Regional Assessment Network

REGIONAL ASSESSMENT NETWORK

Thursday, July 23, 2015

CDE Openings: English Lang. Proficiency Office

CAASPP Office: 2 openings - for the development of primary language assessment, and special ed. assessment (could consider visiting educators)

CAASPP Assessment Expansion:

CDE met with ETS to go over the elements that comprise their contract: SBAC, NGSS and Alternate Science, CAA…CDE will provide “Superintendent Report” to State Board of Education (SBE) in March, their report will include the recommendations for expansion assessments based on AB 484. Many other states are looking at reducing the number of assessments they require, so it remains to be seen how the SBE will view these recommendations for assessment expansion. There is still a belief held by many groups thatif it is not assessed, it will not be taught.

North/South Assessment Meeting:

There will be a celebratory theme this year to acknowledge all the hard work we have all done in administering and implementing the SBAC:

September 18 in the north
September 29 in the south
Wi-Fi will be available at both locations.

District Coordinators will be provided an early opportunity to register two weeks prior to general registration via a password. Further information will be coming out at the beginning of August.

CELDT/ELPAC

ETS has been awarded the ELPAC development contract development based on the final review of proposals by the Hearing Office on July 7
EDS will continue with its current contract for CELDT for 2015-16. The CELDT contract for 2016-17 is TBD
ELPAC will be piloted in 2015-16 with support from the Sacramento County Office of Education
Contract will be amended so the Summative assessment will be developed first, because the English Proficient cut-scores will be determined from the summative assessment. The operational initial assessment will be developed after this.
CDE is working with ED on the operational date for the new assessment; 2016-17 is what ED wants; CDE is proposing 2017-18.
May reuse the CELDT for initial assessments in 2017-18.
July 1, 2018 – expect operational initial assessments.
In late September, the draft blueprints will be taken to the ELPAC advisory group. The current plan is to develop 2,000 items.
One goal is to minimize the testing time. The proposal currently is for the ELPAC to be adaptive by grade span (e.g. k-2, 3-5) to more closely align the tests to the appropriate language development stages of the students. See hand-out #1 for details on ELPAC/CELDT.

CAHSEE (SB 172)

SB 172 on suspense until late August. Superintendent is in support of the bill. If needed, the next CAHSEE would be ready for administration in November. CDE understands that this is impacting master plans etc. for LEAs. Information will be come out shortly from the CAHSEE office.

CHSPE/High School Equivalency Tests (SB 252)

Superintendent support SB 252 which means these tests would be administered to homeless students (ages 16-24) free of charge. No money has been allocated in this bill to provide money to contractors to cover these costs. At this point, it looks the cost would be absorbed by the other student taking these tests.

Smarter Balanced (Handout #2)

(Michelle Center, Deborah Baumgartner)

OPT OUT requirement:

There was a lot of discussion, and CDE has received several calls concerning the OPT OUT notification requirement. CDE was clear that the sample OPT OUT letter on their website, was not meant to fulfill an LEAs obligation to notify their parents about their right to opt out of the summative state assessments. Best practice suggested by CDE staff was to include the opt out information in your LEA’sparent handbook. CDE did not provide a template, is not obligated to provide a template, and is not likely to do so in the future. CDE staff also asked us to remind LEAs that they have until September 15 to update special condition codes. Special condition codes include parental exemptions and medical emergencies. They also suggested that LEAs should consider removing the hard copies of individual test results for students who opted out from their reports to be mailed out. They felt a blank report or one that said “no scores available” could confuse a parent, who had opted their child out of testing.

CAASPP Downtimes:

See handout #2 for details. August 10 the data will be uploaded into TOMS.

Summative Assessment:

This testing cycle there were 45,000 appeals. CDE received complaints that the completion status updates included students who had left the district. ETS/CDE assure us that this will be improved next testing cycle. Testing window will close at the end of July. See handout #2 for new web postings including a video in Spanish explaining the individual score report, scale score report link, and a link to an optional cover letter that superintendents can send out. Individual score reports will begin to be sent out at the end of July. 300,000 responses per day are happening to accommodate this deadline. The ORS faced some delays because of a number of individual students having taken a different grade level of the summative SBAC for the ELA versus mathematics.

CAASPP Public Release & Communications Toolkit(Handout #2)

CDE continues to provide additional communication tools including CAASPP talking points. Public release will be somewhere mid-late August (late August more likely). There was an ORS error with 2 claims scores having being reversed in ORS system. This was communicated from CALTAC to the district CAASPP Coordinator. CAASPP institutes will touch upon interpretation and use of scores (see next item). Score reports will need to go out within 20 days of receipt of your reports, or within 20 days after you return to session (if you are out when they arrive). A parent guide and teacher guide are in progress to explain SBAC summative results. The parent guide should be available near the same that LEAS will be receiving their district reports. The teacher guide will be done by grade span and be similar to the parent guide, but with additional information (SBAC will assist in creating this guide). The teacher guide release date is TBD. CDE shared the redesign of the DataQuest site including the county level reports. These are very visual displays. Data is viewable by sub-groups including gender, ethnicity, EL.

Downloadable data file:

The plan and hope is that the downloadable data files and some downloadable summary file templates will be available after August 10. There is a potential that already populated PDF summary files will also become available in addition to the summary templates.

Interim Assessments;

2014-15 school test will remain available and will be archived. August 10 marks the opening of the 2015-16 window. See handout for further details about the ICAs and IABs.

They will still not be adaptive to help with scoring issues related to teachers having to score several different open-ended answers if these assessments became adaptable.

Digital Library:

The launch page has been redesigned. See handout for more details. We will be sent the names of the State Network of Educators from our region so that we can support them in rolling-out the Digital Library in their districts. Summer scoring workshop will happen in August for educators. See handout #2 for more information. Email with registration information will be coming out, but the workshops will be held in person at 8 locations through-out the state. There is no plan to video archive these trainings.

Formative Assessment Insight Digital Professional Learning-See handout # 3

California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP)
(Don Killmer)

California Alternate Assessment (CalAlt)

The blueprints have been designed for ELA and math.

2016

-CalAlt will be 2 staged adaptive

Stage 1

21 items that are a router

7 – Tier 1 low complexity

7 – Tier 2 moderate complexity

7 – Tier 2 High Complexity

Should know stopping rule by January

Stage 2

6 items based on tier

2017

-Stage 1 router drops down to 9 items

-16 items at their Stager 2 tier

January training will include stopping rules (no decision has been determined at this point). CalAlt will not be reporting scores for 2014-15. Standard setting will be next fall, and the timeline for reporting CalAlt will be different than SBAC results. This March the achievement level descriptors will go to the SBE. SBE will decide how many cuts and how many levels will be used. Next July, standards setting will happen, and the report will come out that August. September the SBE will adopt cut-scores. Score reports will come out Fall 2016. April 11-June 20 is the fixed assessment window for CalAlt for 2015-16.

Emergency regulations will be amended by the Board in September. Four of these emergency regulations will update old regulations [definitions; testing window-to provide more flexibility; apportionment (moving date for certification); universal tools more aligned to SBAC]. Two of the emergency regulation will add eligible student and an explanation of appeals to the current regulations.

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS-CAL NGSS and CAL NGSS Alt.)
Pilot 2017
Field 2018 (waiver request to not double test will be sent to ED)
Operational 2019
Recommendations for the 2018 administration will be going to the SBE in September
Three grades will be assessed. One for each grade span (3-5, 6-9, 10-12)
The three grade levels have not been selected yet
This assessment will not be adaptive, and will involve some human scoring.

CAASPP Institutes

(Rachel Perry)

The Assessment Fellows from CDE will be working with Sacramento County Office of Education and be providing a two day workshop series at various locations around California. These trainings will run from mid-October and mid-November for the first two days in the series, and this spring (dates TBD) for the third day in the series.

Besides touching on score interpretation, these workshops are geared to help LEAs design implementation plans for the use of the summative assessments, interim assessments, and Digital Library. The target audience for these workshops is district teams and/or school teams. Communication announcing these events as well as participation guidelines will be coming out soon.

TOT for County Office Teams

October 12,13,or 14 there will be a trainer of trainer workshop with COEs, so that they can learn about the materials that will be shared with LEAs during these CAASPP Institutes. CDE wants COEs to be able to support LEAs in the implementation of the information they learn at these workshops as well as possibly offering their own versions of these workshops.

Accountability Update (Handout #4)

(Jonathan Isler, Ryan Lam, Justin Lane)

SARC:

The SARC template has been updated and approved by SBE to better match the current state priorities. CDE is in the process of developing a SARC list serve to better target communication around SARC to the right people-Superintendents and then their assigned SARC coordinator. Pilot testing see handout #4for more information. The new template will be up September/October. SARCs need to be updated by LEAs by January (31st?).

Title III

The AMAOS 1 and 2 are up. For 2014-15, AMAO 3 will consist of:

SBAC participation rate (set at 95%)
Attendance for elementary and middle schools or graduation rate for high schools

The complete 2014-15 Title III Accountability report will be released in fall 2015.

AYP (Please read page 2 on handout 4)

Attendance Rates

SBE has not approved the target yet.
The target is likely to range somewhere between 90-94%, but will be determined at SBE in September.
Elementary and middle schools will use attendance rate as their additional AYP indicator.
Any LEA that did not submit their attendance data will fail to meet AYP for this indicator (See handout 4, p.1 for further details).
CAHSEE will no longer be used for grade 10 for accountability purposes; grade 11 SBAC will be used instead.
Release of AYP could be delayed beyond the usual August date, but no new possible date was given.

LTEL Data File

In August, LEAs will receive a data file identifying their Long-Term English Learns and students At-Risk of becoming Long Term English Learns (See page 3 of handout 4).

Average Class Size and TK Reports

Average class size report will be available on DataQuest at the end of July.

A new TK report will also become available (see page 3 of handout 4)

CALPADS

(Paula Mishima)

No changes yet. Specs for SBAC reporting are being developed right now. CDE will get final SBAC results in October, so they hope upload these finalized results shortly after. This final posting on CALPADs and Data Quest will match the most current data in CALPADs and to match the accountability rules. CALPADs office is working with ETS to curtail the data in TOMS to include only what is useful for testing purposes.

Yet to be Resolved:

Studentswith multiple SSIDs. This year some students had to retest because the ID removed was the one they had used to take the SBAC summative.
The 48-hour turn around for changes entered into CALPADs into TOMS is being worked on with ETS

California Special Education Management Information System(CASEMIS)Data:

The special ed. data is beginning to be added into to CALPADs beginning with discipline data.

LCAP and CALPADS reports:

CDE is working with CALPADs reports to reflect the student groups identified in LCAPs.

They are also looking to provide more reports related to LCAP metrics.

Group Share-Out

SBAC display model from the Oak Grove District was shared. They used an Excel workbook to display their SBAC data. This was done on SMART SHEET. They also share a Prezi they had made to share their results to parents. We are checking if they will share their template with us to share.