The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is a group of states that together created a standardized assessment aligned with the Common Core State Standards. The exam, known as the Smarter Balance Assessment, is still in its testing period. In the spring of 2014, students attending public schools in states that belong to the consortium took a preliminary version of the assessment. The trial run was meant to help test developers figure out which questions were effective at assessing knowledge and which should be tweaked.
The final Smarter Balanced Assessment should be ready for use in the 2015 school year. However, developers still have one thing to figure out: achievement levels. These levels and the cutoff points with them are the measurement of how well a student knows the test's content by grade. To decide what scores should belong to which level, the Consortium will solicit the opinions of educators, parents and anyone else who's interested.
Inviting participation
People who are interested in suggesting score cutoffs for achievement levels can register online through the SBAC website. Once you've registered, you must select a time and date to go through the test items between Oct. 6-17. The registration deadline is Sept. 19. Those who participate will devote about three hours to the process. The session, which takes place completely online, starts with a training program explaining the various levels of achievement. The levels are broken down into four brackets, including a thorough, adequate, partial or minimal understanding of the material.
Additionally, participants choose only one subject, either math or English/language arts, to assess. By going through test items and understanding what it takes to reach each achievement level, participants can suggest which questions belong in which difficulty bracket.
The final decision
According to Education Week, once all registered participants complete their sessions, a group of 500 experts will review the suggestions. They will meet in mid-October in Dallas to discuss the test items (which include questions and answers) and cutoff scores, using participant suggestions as a guide. The group of experts will be divided into panels by subject and grade level – for instance, one panel might discuss achievement level details for fourth grade English/language arts, while another will cover first grade mathematics.
"Our approach to achievement level setting emphasizes collaboration and transparency to establish a consistent means of measuring student progress on the Smarter Balanced interim and summative assessments," Joe Willhoft, Smarter Balanced executive director, said in a statement. "The online panel and the in-person workshop will provide an unprecedented opportunity to engage thousands of educators and interested stakeholders across member states, raising awareness about the importance and rigor of the assessments."
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