User's Guide
Field 1: Assessment Elements
» What You Are Looking At / What You Are Looking For
» Performance Assessments
» New Standards Reference Exams
» Next Year's 10th Grade English Language Arts
» Resetting the Rhode Island Health Education Performance Assessment Standards
» The Rhode Island Writing Assessment and the Regents Standards
» The Scholastic Assessment Test
Field 1: Assessment Elements What You Are Looking At You are looking at a graphic representation of the assessment scores on the state tests. The 100-point scale indicates 100% of the children who were assessed at this grade level. The dark band at the top of the bar represents the percentage of the highest scoring students. The black at the bottom represents the percentage of the lowest scorers. The two bands above the white are the percentage of students who have achieved or exceeded the Regents standards. What You Are Looking For You are hoping to see that all children have achieved the standard and are represented only in the top two blocks. Performance Assessments Rhode Island’s state assessment program has completed its transition to the exclusive use of performance assessments. These new tests emphasize applied knowledge, i.e., testing what a child knows and is able to do. The old tests, such as the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT), did not measure proficiency in applied knowledge and were “norm-referenced,” which is to say that the test had no absolute standards of proficiency, but ranked students against one another with reference to a national sample group of students, or “the norm.” New Standards Reference Exams
The tests emphasize the application of knowledge and skills and not just the rote memorization of facts or the computation of math examples without context. Score reports are generated for the individual students as well as aggregations at the school, district and state levels. The detailed score reports are designed to foster local and state discussions about curriculum changes, to point to potentially necessary professional development, to raise instructional and assessment issues with students and parents, and to identify the need for resources to support reaching performance goals. New Standards tests are primarily performance assessments, but also have short fill-in-the-bubble sections to cross check certain skill competencies (like reading comprehension).
Test Subscales The NSRE in mathematics contains three subscales which are: Skills, Concepts and Problem-Solving. The NSRE in English Language Arts contains four subscales which are: Reading: Basic Understanding, Reading: Analysis and Interpretation, Writing: Effectiveness and Writing: Conventions. Particular items from the entire test, which is taken over the course of several days, are grouped in various ways to form the subscale scores. Some items are used in more than one subscale. New Standards Descriptors New Standards considers its descriptors for the various performance levels to be sufficient unto themselves. Written on the report sheets of each subject area test are detailed descriptions of what a child needs to know in order to reach each level. Next Year’s 10th Grade English Language ArtsThe inclusion of the New Standards ELA exam at the 10th grade will complete RI’s state assessment program.
The state’s assessment program emphasizes student knowledge and mastery of the foundation skills of literacy and numeracy. Students need those skills to do well in other subjects such as science and social studies. Therefore, all content areas need to orient their efforts toward supporting and strengthening literacy and numeracy.
Resetting the Rhode Island Health Education Performance Assessment StandardsIn order to relieve the amount of testing concentrated in grades 4, 8 and 10, the Rhode Island-developed Health Education and the Writing assessments were moved to different grades. The Health Assessment is now given at grades 5 and 9. Based on feedback from the school communities — from both parents and practitioners — Regents reset the standards for the Health Assessment to accommodate the new grade levels by adopting the same number of performance levels and descriptors as the New Standards exams. This adoption standardizes the performance level language between the tests and eliminates some unnecessary confusion among the people trying to make sense of the different exams.
Rhode Island Health Education Performance AssessmentResearch shows that children who are healthy learn more effectively, and that good health is a necessary precondition for optimal academic success. High quality health education increases the likelihood that young people will develop healthier lifestyle practices and resist engaging in risky health behaviors. RI’s Health Assessment tells us if our health education initiative is giving our students the knowledge necessary to make good decisions about health and well-being.
The Rhode Island Writing Assessment and the Regents Standards The Writing Assessment given at grade 4 has moved to grade 3, while grade 8 has moved to grade 7. The 10th grade assessment stayed where it was. |
The Rhode Island-developed Writing Assessment is the oldest of the performance exams given in the state. The Regents — in a fairly involved and careful standards-setting exercise — set standards at four performance levels. The Regents will review a proposal to re-set the Writing Assessment standards to bring all the assessments into alignment with the New Standards performance levels and descriptors. Until the standards-setting exercise is completed, the Regents’ standards are described as follows: |
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