The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
What parents should know about Smarter Balanced results for English
The moment has arrived. Since the Common Core was adopted by our state five years ago, we’ve all been anticipating feedback about our students’ performance on the aligned assessments. By now, the results have been delivered to the state, districts, and schools, who will in turn share this information with parents. So what should parents expect, and where will we go from here?
Compared with previous assessments, predictions suggest that on this year’s Smarter Balanced assessment, fewer students will demonstrate proficiency (a composite score of 3 or 4 based on four performance levels: standard not met; standard nearly met; standard met; standard exceeded, with similar ratings identified in individual areas). But even if the scores are low, that doesn’t necessarily make this a bad way to measure students’ performance in English Language Arts (ELA), the area where I provide support to Connecticut teachers and districts. Just consider the many ways that this new-era assessment will work for our students, not against them. Although the new test is imperfect, many critical factors make it more desirable than past assessments.
It is adaptive, meaning that when students respond incorrectly to several ELA items, the test will adjust, offering more basic questions that examine the same literacy knowledge in a more straightforward way. This gives educators and parents more insight into what students can do. Formerly, when an assessment was too hard, the test was not “smart enough” to recalculate a different path to the same end. All we learned was what students could not do.
The Smarter Balanced assessments will show growth over time. Maybe a fourthgrade student is scoring at a “standard nearly met” level in Reading this year, but next year advances to the “standard met” level. The test’s database can graph performance from year to year. This information shows teachers when a particular intervention is or isn’t succeeding. We haven’t had this perk in the past, either.
Even more significant, however, is the nature of the test itself. This new assessment represents substantially revised research-based thinking about what really counts in literacy proficiency: thinking deeply about text, integrating and synthesizing information from multiple sources. This is a tremendous departure from the way we approached literacy in the past — as a collection of isolated skills, frequently tested with questions that grazed the surface of a text rather than probing deeply. In the real world, we try to get as much meaning from the entire story, poem, or article as possible. And that’s the way we want students to read, too.
Sample test items ask: Is there enough evidence for the author’s claim? What is the best evidence? What is the same and what is different about how these two authors developed the theme of loyalty? We want students to be able to respond to queries like these because that is how real readers talk and write about what they read. Any reading assessment should reflect the full array of reading comprehension outcomes, including literal thinking, inference, evaluation, and application to writing. The Smarter Balanced assessment accomplishes this and it would be irresponsible to accept anything less.
Rather than fighting against this new test, a more productive stance is to fight for ways that it can serve students optimally. We don’t want teachers to “teach to the test,” but we do want them to focus on the rigors of literacy to prepare students to be lifelong readers of complex information and literature. When you discuss your child’s test results with her teacher, here are a few proactive questions to raise:
What indicators in my student’s classroom literacy work are (in) consistent with her ELA performance on the test? Did her results surprise you? How can you help her move forward in her understanding of ELA standards to improve her future literacy performance?
How are you focusing on standards-based text-dependent questions and close reading to ensure that she has the opportunity to explore all dimensions of a text?
How can I support her at home to enhance the standards-based work you are doing in the classroom?
All of these questions recognize that the pivotal force here is not the instrument that assesses the standards. It’s not even the standards themselves. It’s the way standards come to life in the classroom, and beyond the classroom. Let’s make sure we are all well-informed about what this test really is so we can use it to maximize the potential of all learners.