Testing and Review Guidelines for the Middle Schools

Testing and Review Guidelines for the Middle Schools

The SLCS Board of Education has given the CITA Department the responsibility of making the final approval decisions for assessments.
District assessments may not be altered or changed without prior written approval of the CITA department.
Assessments may not be removed from the school premises without prior written approval of the CITA department, except for the grading of constructed essay responses. Further exceptions to this may be made, with CITA approval, when SAC members are working on the assessment.
Assessments are to be administered in their entirety by the due date assigned by the district (see Assessment Calendar).
District assessments are secure documents that may not be sent home with students (including homebound students) or provided to non-school personnel.
Whenever possible, teachers will avoid having guest teachers administer district assessments. If having a guest teacher is unavoidable, the classroom teacher will communicate the expectations.
Student teachers may be involved in the giving of assessments, but they may not make personal copies for any reasons. The classroom teacher overseeing the student teacher is responsible for communicating and monitoring the expectations.
It is the teacher’s responsibility to verify that the exam they are administering is the most current version. Information about the most current version dates can be found on the Intranet (CITA\Assessment\Assessment Version Summary). Version dates appear on the exam and teachers must verify that the date within the footer of the exam matches the current version date listed on the Intranet.
Photocopying of the assessment will be done only by the classroom teacher.
District assessments must be kept secure at all times. Copies will not be left on a desk while the teacher is out of the classroom, in copy rooms, or in binders on shelves or desks.
Exam copies must always be hand delivered. At no point will an exam be left in a teacher mailbox, dropped off on a teacher’s desk or sent through interoffice mail. This includes delivery from CITA, from a department facilitator, from a principal or from a fellow teacher.
Exam copies will be held until the following semester exam in a secure location before being destroyed (i.e. hold June exams until January exams, and then shred the June copies). This is done to preserve the exam for documentation purposes should a parent or student contest an exam score.
Ethical practices:

Items from district assessments may not be used in other formats- such as for instruction, in reviews or in classroom assessments.
Questions from the constructed response, essay, or speaking portions of exams may not be disclosed to students in advance. A list of topics may be given for review.
For ELA, students may not be given the essay question topic prior to the exam for any purpose, including for the purpose of gathering quotes to use as supporting evidence.
For ELA, teachers will follow the directions provided by their facilitator on how to conduct a brainstorming session about the readings from the year so that students can create a study guide in-class. Sixth and seventh grade students may use this document on the exam, provided that it is collected and kept by the classroom teacher once the exam is complete. For the purpose of preparing students for high school expectations, eighth grade students may not use this study guide on the exam.
For the middle school SLRA, the curriculum requires pre-teaching of vocabulary. It would be unethical to put a student at a disadvantage by not pre-teaching the required SLRA vocabulary.
Images or diagrams from the assessments are considered assessment items in their own right and are therefore not allowed to be pulled from the assessment for other purposes. Exceptions to this rule may be granted only by a CITA Curriculum Coordinator or the Assistant Superintendent of CITA.
Images from textbooks may be used on exams when copyright laws permit.
When test bank generators are available with instructional materials, these items may be used by a SAC to create portions of an assessment. Classroom teachers are responsible for verifying that any test bank items used for instruction, review, or classroom testing purposes have not already been used for a district assessment.
Violation of these guidelines isconsidered unethical practice. Disciplinary action may be taken.

Exam Review Packets and Classroom Review for required academic core courses:

Students at each building must have access to the same review materials per course. All reviews therefore will be shared between buildings or a common review will be used. Facilitators complete paperwork that verifies that the review materials meet the necessary criteria. These forms are then submitted along with the review to the appropriate CITA Coordinator. Only items in this packet may be used for exam review.
Review packets must be made available to students on a common date. This date is to be determined by each department with input from both schools.
Only facilitators may keep electronic copies of the review.
Mathematics teachers may use and retain the approved electronic bank of additional review questions for use in instruction and review. This bank, and any updates to the bank, must be approved by facilitators prior to classroom use.
Review packets and classroom reviews may not contain any information (including images or diagrams) from the actual district assessment.
Review packets do not have to be taught in their entirety. Teachers may choose to review only those portions of the packet which their classroom data suggests are necessary. In some cases, this may mean that the teacher reviews very little or only those items that students request. The packet does need to be made available to all students however. Reviews must be made available to students at both schools on a commonly agreed upon date.

The answers to the review packet must be made available to students at both schools by a commonly agreed upon date.
If the review packet consists solely of a list of concepts to be studied, no key will be released to students.
It is expected that where rubrics are used for scoring, students have experience with similar rubric format. Best practice dictates that the students will have the opportunity to practice self-scoring using constructed responses, essays, and/or speaking prompt rubrics.

Homebound Students:

District assessments are secure documents that may not be sent home with students (including homebound students) or provided to non-school personnel. When possible, homebound students are welcome to come to the school buildings to take the district exam.

For homebound students unable to come to the building, teachers may modify the review packet and use the review in place of the district assessment. Or, teachers and/or departments may write a new exam for these students. If an exam other than the district assessment is given, these students are not included in district compiled data.

Special Education Students

As permitted by an IEP, middle school students with support courses who require additional testing time may begin their exam in advance if it is foreseeable that the exam period will not be sufficient. These students will begin the exam as close to the actual start date as possible but no more than one week before general education students are given the exam. During the early testing, students with special education needs will be given only a small portion of the exam, i.e. one page at a time, and must be required to complete that portion during the early testing session (students cannot revisit that portion at a later date). Early testing will be coordinated by the student’s case load worker.
If a middle school student with an IEP allowing additional time does not have a support class in which to begin testing early, he or she may stay after school to complete the exam. This will be coordinated by the student’s case load worker.

ESL Students

ESL Students

Students that score at Level 1 (Entering) English Proficiency on the W-APT/ WIDA-ACCESS will not be assessed on standard written classroom or district assessments. Alternate assessments should be given. The report card will be marked “with accommodations.”
Students that score at Level 2 (Emerging) on the W-APT/ WIDA-ACCESS will be assessed with highly modified classroom on all classroom and district assessments,withusing accommodations and modifications according to the adjustmentsconsistent with those used in instruction. The report card will be marked “with accommodations.” Some students may advance to needing fewer accommodations throughout the school year.
Students that score at Level 3 (Developing) will be assessed using standard district assessments allowing for some accommodations, as determined by classroom and ESL teachers, until no longer needed.
Please follow the these ESL Exam suggestions when reporting on:

1)Level 1 students: do not run their bubble sheet through the scanner, just hand score alternate test and return to CITA with student’s name, and “Do not include, ESL STUDENT”.

2)Level 2 students: On the classroom Assessment Completion Worksheet that gets returned to CITA, the classroom teacher will write the student’s name and say not included (ELL) follow the same as above for Level 1, unless or until students are able to take accommodated classroom and district tests, then score by hand and return to CITA with student’s name, and “with accommodations, ESL STUDENT.”

3)Level 3 students: score normally, using scantron, and use limited accommodations until no longer needed. Return the student scantron to CITA with the Assessment Completion Worksheet

Absent Students

Absent students must make up the assessment.
If an extended absence is planned in advance (i.e. sports camp) and the student will be absent for the entire testing period, the building administration will, with teacher input, determine a testing schedule.
In the case of an unplanned extended absence, the building administration will, with teacher input, determine a plan for testing.

Guest Teachers and Student Teachers:

All efforts must be made to avoid giving district assessments on days when guest teachers are present. If this becomes necessary, the classroom teacher must inform the guest teacher that no copies of the assessment are to be made or shared beyond those needed for students that day. No copies of the assessment may leave the classroom.
While in the classroom, guest teachers are responsible for securing the assessment.
In the case of long-term leaves (medical, maternity, paternity, etc.), the guest teacher may review the assessment prior to each unit of instruction during planning conferences with the department facilitator and/or department teachers. The purpose of these meetings is to guide instruction for the unit of study. Department facilitators and department members will assist the long-term guest teacher in preparing for the assessment.
Student teachers may be involved in the giving of assessments, but they may not make personal copies for any reasons. This includes describing or photocopying any portion of the exam for sharing in university coursework or course discussions. The classroom teacher overseeing the student teacher is responsible for communicating and monitoring these expectations.

Administration of the Assessment:

It is the role and responsibility of the classroom teacher to act as a proctor during district assessments. This requires that teachers actively monitor their students for inappropriate behavior (i.e. watch students and walk around the classroom frequently).
All classrooms where an assessment is being given must have teacher supervision at all times.
The classroom will remain quiet for the entire testing period out of respect for the surrounding classrooms.
Teachers need to specifically monitor for the use of prohibited electronic communication devices (i.e. pagers, cell phones, PDA).
Cell phones, iPods, iPads and other personal electronic devices may NOT be used as calculators when students are taking district assessments.
Sixth grade mid-year and end of year exams are untimed and additional testing time may be given to students who do not finish within the test window. In seventh grade, additional time may still be given but teachers will counsel those who struggle to finish in time about good test taking strategies. The message will be shared with seventh grade students that additional time is not permitted in eighth grade or in high school. General education eighth graders will not be given additional testing time (beginning with the 2011-2012 school year). This must be communicated by the classroom teacher in advance of the test date, such as at the beginning of the year and again when students begin reviewing for the exams.
In courses where the assessment requires the use of a graphing calculator, teachers must work with students to clear the memory of the calculators immediately before and after the assessment. (See attached document.)
Individual copies of the assessment will be provided to each student and the student must record his or her full name at the top of the assessment.
Any scrap paper used by students must be turned in along with the assessment.
So as not to create disruptions to the testing environment, when students have finished the exam, they may not get up to turn in exam materials or raise their hands for teachers to collect materials.
If a teacher wishes to allow for activity beyond silent reading at the end of the exam period- Upon completion of the exam, students will store their exam materials in a manila folder on the corner of their desk. Then students may quietly begin other activities that are approved by the classroom teacher (such as silently reading, studying, making up work, finishing projects, etc.).
If a teacher wishes to have all students silent read upon completion of the exam, then exam materials do not need to be store in manila folders. Those materials may remain on student desks.
Students may not be allowed out of class during exam times, except for emergencies.
Bubble sheets must be stored in the correct folder of the labeled bins in the media center.
Student exams will be stored in a secure (locked) location for one semester and then shredded by district staff.

Student and Parent Review of the Assessments:

When teachers distribute graded exams and review the results of the exams with their classes, teachers must make sure that students do not record information and return all copies of the assessment before leaving the room. This debriefing will take place within two weeks of the exam period.
Parents or guardians may view their student’s performance on the assessment under teacher or office supervision at the school building. Parents or guardians may not record any information and must return all copies of the assessment before leaving the meeting.
After bubble sheets are returned to CITA, it is still possible that a copy of the students’ bubble sheet can be made available for review with parents or students. In these cases, teachers and administrators will contact CITA to request a copy of the bubble sheet. However, this copy must remain with the teacher or administrator and be shredded after the meeting.
Teachers may provide parents with a list of general topics for further study with their child (i.e. dividing fractions) but not specific problems or questions (including portions of problems or questions) or copies of their student’s work.

It is important that all staff helps to protect the validity, reliability, and confidentiality of our district assessments.

All infractions of these expectations must be reported immediately to your principal.

Failure to follow these guidelines may result in disciplinary action.

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