Part 1: Student Growth Measures
Ohio Department of Education
Part 2: Student Learning Objectives
Ohio Department of Education
Latest
Overview of Student Learning Objectives
Vendor Walk Raffle Winners!
Attendees who participated in the Vendor Walk by visiting our vendor booths and getting their punch cards stamped were eligible for vendor sponsored prizes. Congratulations to the following winners!
Wilma Gillott – $100 Gift Card for Curriculum Associate
Curriculum Associates
Stan Laferty – $500 gift card for one On-the-Go Solutions for 2013-2014 (non-transferable)
Practical Solutions for Educators
Jenifer Csiszar – NEO & Receiver (a $200 value)
Renaissance Learning
Cathy Shinaberry – Literature 6th ed., Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, DiYanni, R.
ODE Advanced Placement Team
Donna M. Stanfield – 1-yr. Subscription for an entire building of Lightning Grader Assessment Solutio, includes PD ($2500 value)
Easy Graphics
Stephanie Grube – Teach Like a Champion – 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College, by Doug Lemov. Jossey-Bass Teacher
ODE Advance Placement Team
Diana Savage – Award Winners, Grades 6-8 Book collection ($72.50 value)
Scholastic Classroom and Community Group
Joyce Ayette – Instructor’s Manual to Accompany Literature an Introduction to Reading and Writing, Roberts, E. V., Zweig, R., Lemmon, L. S.
ODE Advanced Placement Team
Jamie Morris – Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound & Sense 11 ed., Arp, R.R., and Johnson, G.
ODE Advanced Placement Team
Kari Cooley – SRA Number Worlds PreK-8; A-J
McGraw Hill
Deborah Pustulka – Collections of Instructional Materials from Continental Press
Continental Press/Mondo Publishing
Tracy Carpenter – $25 Gift Card
ITIP OH/Western Reserve Public Media
Preparing for the Administration of Next Generation Assessments
Presenters: Kirk Ross, Educational Consultant, ODE; Larry Early, Associate Director of Assessment, ODE.
Summary: Purpose of presentation was to increase awareness of numerous considerations that are part of movement toward a computer-based assessment system; how stakeholders can prepare for change; engage participants in discussion about related topics.
Presenters addressed these questions (in bold).
Why computer-based assessments?
- They are a better fit for where we are going with instruction. New standards have technology built into them. Instruction will drive the assessments, rather than other way around. Want assessments to be seamless with instruction; with students unaware that they are taking tests.
- Assessments will be oriented to college- and career-readiness skills. Assessments to be based on real-world experiences. Will ask them to show what they know and can do.
What are technology-enhanced items?
- They may be of different types, will ask for a response or action, include media, and be interactive. They may be of various complexities, but must have fidelity, and use an automated or human scoring method.
- Will include various types of items including short answer, multiple choice, longer open-response and performance-based items. Expect to have examples to show students and teachers in advance of their use during pilots.
What are the benefits for Ohio of computer-based assessments?
Should be able to reduce our costs for the statewide assessments, although Ohio will have to do parallel paper/pencil and computer tests since not all districts are up to capacity and some families will object to computer assessments. Internet safety will be a consideration – there will be no access to Internet for anything other than the assessment.
What steps is the state taking toward the goal of a statewide computer-based assessment system?
- Conducted a needs analysis to create a detailed assessment-design roadmap.
- Piloting assessments.
- Looking at options to reduce costs to make technology available to all districts. Also keeping a long-term view on technology needs.
- Communicating with districts on an ongoing basis. Kirk Ross sends email communications with district technology staff and responds to phone and email questions regularly. Contact him at kirk.ross@education.ohio.gov.
What can districts do to prepare for the new assessments?
- Anticipate ongoing change – design and implement a plan for ongoing needs analysis, including system, development, capacity building and communication.
- Increase awareness, perhaps have a school-level team.
- Change behaviors – be ready to embrace technology in learning process, actively get engaged in implementation process and be willing to make necessary changes.
For More Information: Click here to download the presentation.
How to Create High-Quality and Rigorous LEA Assessments for OTES
Presenters: Rachel Vannatta Reinhart, Toni Sondergeld, Center of Assessment and Evaluation Services, Bowling Green State University
Summary: For teachers who will not be evaluated by Ohio’s value-added system, LEAs will still need to have a means of assessing student growth. This presentation was aimed at helping LEAs think about developing and piloting assessments that can be used to create student learning objectives for these teachers.
Districts could use assessments created by vendors or the LEA itself. LEA assessments help with teacher ownership and better alignment of assessment with what LEA is actually teaching. But for student growth measures to be effective, they need to be based on detailed measurable objectives at specified learning levels.
Local measures must be standards-based, use standardized administrative practices, involve teacher contributions, have inter-rater reliability, be externally validated by content experts, use assessment refinement, influence practice, and have three years of trend data available.
Challenge is to create assessments that are comprehensive, measure student growth, time-efficient, objective with constructed response items, aligned with instruction and curriculum, and that are reliable and valid.
To achieve quality objectives, assessments can use multiple choice items. Speakers use 20 golden rules in assessment development. One example is to avoid “all of the above” or “none of the above” as choices. These are not good responses for diagnostic purposes. Also, development process involves following a checklist:
- Make response options plausible and real.
- For constructed response items, align item instructions with grading criteria using a grading rubric.
- Finalize assessment by writing directions, developing standard administration and grading practices.
- Teachers need to review their assessments and also have a peer review. Examine the alignment between the instructional blueprint and the assessment. Is it balanced to reflect areas of instruction in right proportions, as well as the appropriate cognitive levels?
- Eliminate error by interviewing students.
- Have an expert review.
- Pretest data analysis. Administer, analyze items and generate student reports that can be used to develop student learning objectives.
Desired outcome is for valid and reliable assessments..
Collaborate, Differentiate and Integrate with the Common Core
Presenters: Cindy Mullen and Jen Carey, third-grade teachers with Hartville Elementary School in Lake Local Schools, Stark County.
Summary: Two of the six third-grade teachers at this elementary building described what they are doing together to collaborate on developing lesson plans that are differentiated for students of various abilities, are tied to Common Core and new Ohio standards in multiple disciplines and build student computer skills. They described two month-long units the six teachers have taught for several years. Their success is high: 85 percent of their OAA scores were in the advanced or accelerated levels, despite the fact that a high number of students are from low-income families.
- Teachers throughout Lake Local Schools are required to have 30 minutes of collaboration time each day. The third-grade teachers at Hartville also spent time during the summer to jump start their projects. The teachers believe that no one has time to do it all by themselves, nor can teachers fit in everything if they teach only one lesson at a time. So they work together as a team and prepare instruction that incorporates multiple content areas.
- Teachers design the units by identifying essential questions about what they want students to learn. Then they choose how they will learn information by selecting engaging activities that make real-world connections.
- All students answer the same essential question(s) that are placed in student packets. Teachers differentiated these lessons according to depth of writing and research expectations, which are explained in the low, medium and high level student packets. Teachers also encourage students to help each other and they do so easily. Hartville classrooms are less about teachers talking in lecture style than giving students activities where they learn by doing and working together.
- The first project, focused on these questions “What is an oil spill?”; “What is our responsibility to be a part of the solution to this problem?” and “Why should we be socially responsible in our world?”
- Students read books and websites, and view videos. They also did an activity in which they created an oil spill in a pie plate and had to figure out how to contain it and clean it up with various tools provided. They created an environment in which the spill happens, with animals and vegetation. Students later wrote about which cleaning method worked best. Wrote thank you notes to those who donated materials for exercise. This unit integrated social studies, science, reading and math (did charts).
- Another unit supported new standards stressing research skills. Students answered one of two essential questions: Why is your animal able to survive in its habitat? (middle- and struggling-readers and writers). Or “Why is your biome unique and how would it effect the planet if it would be destroyed” (for advanced students).
Ohio’s Race to the Top (RttT) strategy aligns with the Ohio Department of Education’s (ODE's) vision and mission to implement a world class education system in which all students will graduate with a sense of purpose and be well prepared for college, work and life. 
