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Reading and Math Interventionist

AIMSweb Assessment Difficulties in an Urban / Suburban School District in Northeastern Kansas.

Any time you begin a new assessment method, there are going to be “growing pains”. Within the district exactly where I teach we had our share, but by the end from the second AIMSweb assessment session (Winter, 2012), we felt like we had a quite very good deal with on it for the next session (Spring, 2012). Following, I will go over many of the problems we had as well as the solutions - or attempted options - we implemented.

First of all let me describe our predicament. We had a district-wide testing group. This was the very first time our district had performed this. Of course this was also the initial time our district had seriously implemented an assessment system. We had not used a universal screener district-wide just before. Previously, each developing tested its own students, normally making use of a formative or diagnostic test. Our team consisted of our building-level interventionists. Our instructional coaches played a role, but for one of the most aspect didn't administer any assessments. They helped with organizing supplies, served as “runners” to acquire children to and in the testing location, helped make the schedule, and so forth. It needs to be noted that by “helped” I mean they generally did it all by themselves.

Our testing group received education in tips on how to administer and score the AIMSweb measures. The education was more than the course of two to 3 sessions. We essentially followed the AIMSweb Education Workbook, utilized the video examples to practice scoring, received information and facts from presenters in particular person and by means of webcam. We did not get training from certified AIMSweb trainers. And, I feel this produced a difference. In my opinion it would have been valuable to obtain instruction from someone who had essentially administered the assessment measures. We had some pretty certain inquiries that couldn't be answered.

Our initial session (Fall, 2011), went fairly well contemplating we knew next to absolutely nothing going in. Our primary problem was in scoring. We did not agree on what to complete concerning the entire “does the answer have to be written in the blank or not” on the MCAP (Math Ideas & Application) and MComp (Math Computation) measures. The instructions are quite explicit. According to AIMSweb, if the answer isn't in the blank, it is marked incorrect. However, there is a grey area. Within the standardized instructions for the students on the MCAP it specifically says to write the answer inside the blank. In the standardized instructions for the students around the MComp is doesn't say to write the answer within the blank. Unfortunately, what this meant for us was that some scorers counted it wrong and some did not. So, we didn't have consistent scoring the first time around.

The lesson we learned (I hope) is that you need to have those types of troubles decided prior to you even administer the test. We talked about what it meant if the student did not write the answer within the blank. We decided it meant they could not follow instructions, not that they could or couldn't compute the problem correctly. We asked ourselves, “What are we trying to determine with the test?” We decided we were not trying to determine whether or not a student can follow directions. We decided that it didn't matter if they put it in the blank or not, we just needed to all be scoring the same way. So, we eventually decided not to count it wrong as long as the answer was in the box somewhere and correct.

Another concern we had was that there was no “team leader” for our testing team. We had a person we could call, but not anyone on site. In hindsight it would happen to be valuable to have a “go to” particular person assigned or appointed to the group. This could be one of the interventionists, or a person who doesn't do any testing. This would have saved us quite a bit of time when we had to try and figure out how we were going to score the math. That individual could have created an executive decision or called someone to find out. Then there would happen to be no disagreement about what to complete in a particular predicament.

Another major issue we still have is what to do concerning the data in terms of getting it out to the teachers and explaining what it means. We did eventually print out parent report letters and talk in regards to the results at conferences. We found what we truly need is for the teachers to receive some AIMSweb instruction. We need to know tips on how to read the data, interpret or analyze the data, and learn tips on how to talk to parents concerning the data. Some people aren't familiar with percentile rank, norms, standardization, etc.

Progress monitoring is another location that hasn't been perfectly implemented. Some schools progress monitor once per week, some once every two weeks, some barely once a month. There is a lot of info to consider when progress monitoring. Many of the more important pieces of information and facts are: How often do you progress monitor? Need to you progress monitor or strategically monitor a particular student? When progress monitoring is it seriously necessary to “drill down” or “test backwards” until you find the level at which to monitor the student? (That, by the way, takes a long time.) How do you set the goals for the student? What formula do you use? What do you do if the student reaches his/her goal? Are they automatically dismissed from intervention? What if they aren't on a trajectory that shows they will meet their goal? Do they automatically go to tier 3 interventions? How many data points are necessary to make a decision about a student?

Hopefully you are going to be able to have some of these queries answered prior to you commence your district-wide assessment program. It will save you so much time and effort and you are going to be able to focus on what matters: what to accomplish with the students who are at-risk according to the screener.

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