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The Good, The Bad, and The SBAC
The Good
It’s high noon and the roll out of the SBAC online testing is tomorrow. Administrators have organized the school into areas of testing and non-testing, with our Seniors presenting their Senior Projects in the non-testing areas. Alternative classrooms have been designated in the event that wireless should fail (as it did in my wing this week). Each proctor has a assistant who has received training in conducting the exam and what drink we want from Starbucks.
The first test is the computer adaptive math test, and the allotted time for administering it is around two and a half hours. The test is untimed, so if students don’t finish in two and a half hours, well…we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Actually, there is supposed to be a designated location where students can go and complete their tests, but that means they have to log off and log back on. Students will have to stop at a saved point to avoid re-doing problems. This move could result in a number of interesting events, but I’ll save those for the next blog.
The Bad
Day 2 is beginning to cause consternation among the faculty now that we have seen the activity that is the basis of the task questions. Most of us did not realize that half of the math portion of the assessment would be task-based.
Over 25% of Florin High School’s students are EL, with many more having been previously classified as EL. Typically our students struggle more with word-based problems and applications. Students and teachers don’t make excuses for doing poorly on those problems. There is just a steeper hill to climb to get to the answer.
A list of accepted accommodations.
The SBAC
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium has established “accommodations” for English Language Learners and Students with Disabilities, but even with pre-programmed accommodations, Day 2 will be challenging for those with the EL designation and for those without it. The data collected on our students for this assessment will certainly have a significant impact on future instruction. Reading and writing across the curriculum has long been a focus, but a greater emphasis on reading mathematical material will surely emerge.
But for now, we will breathe deep, get a good night’s sleep, and be ready when Starbucks opens tomorrow. Tune in next week for the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the SBAC assessments.
Getting Ready For The Common Core Assessments
After having a joke fall flat in my Algebra class, a student leaned over to me and whispered “Tell it to us again, it will be funny this time.”
But this week, at our monthly math department meeting, I presented practice problems for the second time from the Smarter Balanced Assessments. This time from the training test, a short 8-question test. From the look on my colleagues face, there was nothing funny about what they saw.
The discussions that followed were not so much about the math as they were about how our students are going to be able to understand and access the technology involved in calculating and entering a solution. With only a minimal amount of experience on the Chromebooks, would our students remember where to find the calculator? Would they understand how to group expressions with appropriate parentheses?
On April 22nd and 23rd our school will be taking the new summative (Common Core) assessment by Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). We hope the joke will not be on us.
As we near the inaugural assessment, anxiousness grows among the administrators and teachers at our school and, I’m guessing, at many schools across our great state. Our school wasn’t part of the Field Test of the assessment because we didn’t have enough computer labs, nor did our technology infrastructure support mobile wireless carts. Chromebooks arrived just this year to provide roughly a 1 to 4 student-to-computer ratio. Our wireless infrastructure was updated and many teacher’s desktops were upgraded from Windows XP. We are now ready to go … or are we?
As the Common Core coordinator for my department, I took special care in making sure that our teachers new what was on the practice SBAC exams. We worked in teams and examined the 7th, 8th, and 11th grade practice exams. We discussed where our students might struggle with the mathematics, the technology, or both. I created lists of vocabulary words from the middle and high school practice tests and passed them out to the whole school. We assembled 2-inch binders with information that would help us transition. Many PLC mornings were dedicated to being prepared for the assessments.
Let the Common Core assessments begin.
The SBAC assessment folks assume that the test takers won’t be under additional mental stress when using “drag and drop” procedures, or using the notepad, or locating the calculator and using it’s numbers and symbols. But our students, whom many have no computers or internet, have not developed a comfort level where there won’t be significant mental demand just operating the Chromebook. Many of our teachers also share that discomfort and are making every effort to give students more practice time with the computers.
Are the new assessments a catalyst for change in the use of technology? Absolutely. Are we ready for that change? Probably not, but it’s here, and on April 22nd and 23rd a new era of technology in education will drive it’s way into our classrooms.
Road To Teaching Conference at Santa Ana College, November 22, 2014
This post was adapted from a speech given at the Road To Teaching Conference at Santa Ana College on November 22, 2014.
When I look out at pre-service teachers, I see the future of education in California. And I feel good about it. They are bringing energy and excitement with them into the classroom. They will infuse their departments with new ideas about teaching and learning. They will understand brain theory better than any generation of teachers before them. They will use that to develop environments where students love to learn. I am very proud of the path they (and you, teachers reading this) have chosen.
Cleaning Off The Whiteboard 