Bright Education Services & Testing

 

The majority of K-8 students in the state of Iowa participate in the Iowa Statewide Testing Program and take the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS), according to the website for The University of Iowa, the institution that administers the assessment.

In the North Winneshiek School, educators set specific goals with each student and emphasized the importance of doing well on the assessment, The Decorah Newspapers reported.

The No Child Left Behind Act states that students who achieve ITBS scores within the 41st to 99th percentile for reading comprehension, mathematics total and science are considered to be proficient, according to the news source. However, any pupils who score below this range are not.

In North Winneshiek, ITBS results revealed that students in grades three through eight performed the strongest in science, the news outlet reported, with mathematics and reading their next best subjects, respectively.

While Tim Dugger, the superintendent of the school, was quoted by the news source as saying that it gets harder for institutions to achieve adequate yearly progress (AYP) each year, the school managed to meet its AYP goals across several key areas. For instance, 84 percent of fifth graders were found to be proficient in reading. 

Third-grade students in Florida who were recommended for being held back had the chance to improve their reading scores over their summer vacations with the Highland County Summer Reading Program, the News Sun reports. This initiative is lead annually by the state Department of Education and is offered to third-grade students in many school districts around the region.

As the program comes to a close, the group of students will prepare to spend two weeks taking the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-10). If these children receive proficient scores in reading on this assessment, there is a chance that they will be able to move to the fourth grade, Joyce McClelland, director of elementary education, told the news outlet.

According to its website, the SAT-10 is a multiple-choice test that is used to show educators what students know and are able to accomplish. The assessment for reading includes various sub-tests, which can measure students' vocabulary, phonics, decoding and comprehension skills.

In the past few years, McClelland said about 60 percent to 70 percent of the students who complete the course pass the SAT-10 reading assessment. While last year, this number was around 40 percent, she said she is confident that this figure will rise this year. 

School leaders from North Carolina's New Hanover County Board of Education recently met to discuss the possibility of accepting a five-day waiver that was offered to them by the state, Star News Online reports. These five professional days would be used to discuss how the Common Core State Standards can be smoothly integrated into their current curriculum.

According to its website, the Common Core State Standards is a national initiative that aims to ensure that students are learning the same topics in English language arts and mathematics during the same grades. Currently, 48 states and territories have decided to adopt the new curriculum.

In the General Assembly budget, five days were added to the calendars of public schools across the state. However, since many institutions had already finalized their calendars by that time, the state decided to allow those schools that want to have additional development days to apply for waivers, the news outlet reports.

During their meeting, the county board decided to take advantage of this additional time and plans to use three days for professional development and add an extra two days onto the students' academic calendar in order to prepare them for the five days that will be added in the 2012-2013 school year.

 

When Colorado school officials decided that it was time to update their curriculum, they chose to adopt the Common Core State Standards, according to Coloradoan. Melissa Colsman, director of teaching and learning for the state Department of Education, said that ultimately, they were searching for "fewer, clearer, higher standards."

According to its website, the Common Core State Standards is a national curriculum for mathematics and English language arts. One of its goals is to give students modern technology skills. However, it also aims to prepare high school graduates for college or the workforce.

Colsman said that this is an important part of the standards and she plans to implement this in the new state curriculum as well.

"We now have a seamless articulation of expectations from preschool to postsecondary education," she told the news source.

Colorado schools will begin to use the Common Core State Standards, in addition to their state-created curriculum, in the upcoming school year. At this time, students can expect to see a new transitional standardized testing system as well as a unique classroom learning school, the news outlet reports. 

 

The Common Core State Standards mandates that in order to be prepared for college or the workforce, students must be able to "use technology and digital media strategically and capably." In order to comply with this new national curriculum, many schools across the country are searching for ways to integrate technology into their classrooms.

The Mendon, Illinois Community Unit School District No. 4 (CUSD #4) is doing so by providing freshman and sophomore students with Apple laptops in order to enhance their understanding of mathematics and English language arts. Using these computers, students will have access to educational programs that are in line with the Common Core State Standards.

District Superintendent Diane Robertson believes this is a step in the right direction.

"Today marks a paradigm shift for CUSD #4," she said. "The incredible advancements in technology have now made it possible for us to offer our students their own personalized learning paths to prepare them for success in school and in life."

Robertson added that this project also provides equality in the district, as it gives electronics to students who may not have access to such technology at home.

 

Officials from Challenger School, a private institution in Utah, recently announced that this year, its students received the highest scores on their Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) in the school's history.

Their 2011 test results indicated that the school's kindergarten students scored in the 96th percentile, meaning that they had better results than 96 percent of the other children who took the assessment. Additionally, the eighth-grade students were placed in the 98th percentile, scoring higher than 98 percent of other eighth-grade pupils who took the ITBS.

Even when Challenger School children were compared to other private schools exclusively, as opposed to all institutions that administer the assessment, officials said the students still performed much better than average.

While the results of this year's ITBS scores were particularly high, Barbara Baker, chief executive officer and founder of the school, said that the pupils have always received good results.

“Challenger students have always performed extraordinarily well on national standardized tests, consistently averaging in the top 10 percent nationally," Baker said. "We’re proud of that record and are committed to maintaining it." 

As the Utah State Board of Education expects the Common Core State Standards to be fully-implemented by 2013, teachers in the Cache Valley recently met to study the curriculum and discuss how they can incorporate the changes into the classrooms, The Herald Journal reports.

The Common Core State Standards is a national initiative that strives to ensure that students across the country are learning the same material in the same grades. Currently, 49 states and territories have adopted the program, according to The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Reed Spencer, a coordinator from the state Board of Education, told the news outlet that one of the biggest changes the schools will have to make is using an international model to teach mathematics. Additionally, she said that in English language arts, students will work towards "producing language" rather than "gathering information."

Tami Pyfer, a local representative of the Board of Education, added that the Common Core State Standards will give students more skills that they can use when they enter college or the workforce, the media outlet reports.

 

According to the Common Core State Standards' website, more than 40 states have already adopted the system that aims to ensure that students across the country are exposed to the same curriculum. This has prompted discussion from educators about whether or not this is actually a good thing for the nation's youth.

While some individuals oppose federal intervention in state schools, other professionals, such as Richard Riley, maintain that the Common Core State Standards is a good thing for the schools that use it, VOA News reports.

Riley, former education secretary to President Bill Clinton, said that it is important to remember that adopting the standards is not mandatory, according to the media outlet. States that have decided to use the Common Core State Standards have done so voluntarily. However, he said that based on his experience he believes that the national system is necessary. When states were asked to create their own standards in the 1990s, some areas had stronger requirements than others. This created a discrepancy in the capabilities of children in different states, he said.

 

Standardized tests like the SAT-10 are typically calculated electronically, but the corrections are not done at the testing site. Several school districts in the state of New York recently made history for using the first ever electronic scoring system that was on-site.

The Educational Assessment Scoring Environment (EASE) was created by the Education Division of Optimum Solutions Corporation, and was designed to use the same data capture technology that was used by the U.S. Census Bureau during their 2010 survey.

Company officials suggest that this invention will be beneficial to school districts, as it will allow their staff to determine the students' scores.

"These school districts are pointing the way to the future for all schools throughout the state and, indeed, the country," said John Harrison, executive vice president of the company. "While other states have certainly implemented electronic scoring in their standardized test data collection, none have been able, until today, to offer the EASE suite of applications that provides a totally customizable scanning, closed end processing and constructed response scoring solution."

 

As part of education reform, many schools are choosing to evaluate their teachers' pay based on how well students perform on standardized tests.

The media is beginning to uncover how some schools matched up to others in terms of student testing, causing some educators to criticize being portrayed as either good or bad from test scores alone, according to the Los Angeles Times.

After the Times published an analytical piece about STAR Testing scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District, some administrators and union leaders said that it was an unfair portrayal of educators.

Some critics have suggested that standardized test scores alone should not be the go-to for determining teacher pay, as there could be other reasons for student performance.

According to the Times Record Online, there are other factors for student test performance other than teachers. These factors include relationships with other teachers, the students' home environment, parental support and mobility to and from school can all be reasons for how a pupil performs on a standardized test.

 

It's become a requirement for public schools to assess how well their students perform when compared to the rest of the country. Through the No Child Left Behind Act, schools must choose a form of standardized testing to determine exactly where their students measure up.

However, although some private schools in Pennsylvania are opting out of taking tests, some Catholic schools and other private institutions are choosing to take the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT 10), according to the Bucks County Courier Times.

The news provider reports that these institutions are finding that they're attracting parents who are concerned that public school systems spend too much time in their curriculum focusing on prepping students for performing on standardized tests.

The SAT 10 is available to children throughout their academic careers ranging from kindergarten to high school, and tests them in reading comprehension, science and mathematics. Test takers must complete the test using multiple choice, short answers and extended responses.

 

Some schools across the country are using standardized test scores in order to get recognition from the government. However, a number of analysts suggests that standardized tests had become too predictable for some, which is why New York state decided to make math and English tests more difficult.

Now that proficiency has dropped, The New York Times reports that this may not be due simply to the fact that the tests are harder than before, but rather that there are flaws within the new system. Some analysts believe that because there has been such stress upon teachers to have well-performing students, they've simply been teaching pupils the exam material.

"They just kept upping the stakes with the scores, putting more pressure on the schools but not really looking at what it all means," Pedro Noguera, an education professor at New York University who has worked with the city's Department of Education to help improve struggling schools, told the news provider.

The news source suggests that because these standardized tests had been in place for a number of years, they became too predictable, and now many feel as though they've been thrown a curveball with the new exams.

Baldwin County schools in Alabama are planning to have their eighth grade students take the EXPLORE test, which will help determine their college and career readiness, according to AL.com. This test will replace the Stanford Achievement Test after spring 2011. Additionally state officials will be adding the Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test, which will start in spring 2012.

"When I talk about finding out what works," superintendent Alan Lee told the news provider. "I'm not just talking about professional development. We have to change the culture here. There should not be a school that's better than us."

The Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test is available for grades three through eight.

 

Since the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, the government has been using standardized test scores to track the progress of public schools and the curricula they offer to their students. Some schools that continue to show low test scores are sometimes stripped of funding or forced to lay off teachers.

However, the state of New Jersey is finding that overall, its schools are making progress in boosting standardized test scores, according to NorthJersey.com. The results of the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK) standardized tests showed that some districts are making improvements in terms of student performance.

"We are moving forward," Kathy Regan, director of curriculum and instruction for the Glen Rock school district, told the news provider. "We rolled out a new math program and our scores are unbelievable. We are now moving forward and staying focused on writing and reading."

The NJ ASK is typically given to public school students in grades three through eight. The exams are typically given in March, April or May.

 

The state of New Jersey is looking to hold their public school systems responsible for ensuring that their students are up to par with all that's required of their grade.

In order to ensure that students are meeting national requirements in a number of subjects, the New Jersey Department of Education has announced that high school students must take a biology standardized test in order to fulfill graduation requirements, according to the Independent.

"Starting with this year, students are going to have to receive a passing score on the [New Jersey Biology Competency Test] NJBCT," Cresenda Jones, supervisor of mathematics and science for the Holmdel Township School District, told the news provider. "If they fail the test, then the DOE will require them to retake the test, but they have not provided information at this point about what that process is going to be."

According to the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, in a practice run, nearly half of the 105,000 students who took the exam passed. In a new standard approved by the board, students must get 53 percent of the questions right in order to pass.

After the state of New York changed their standardized tests, many students have found the new exams much harder than the previous tests. However, budget cuts could mean that students who are struggling will not get the extra help they need.

Parents are concerned that children who attend schools in the Bronx will not be able to receive after school help for the test, as schools are enacting cost-cutting measures, according to the New York Daily News.

"The state raised the standards for what is passing, but the city is not giving us the resources we need to raise our kids up," Frances Tejada, an organizer with Highbridge Community Life Center, told the news provider. "How do they expect our children to be successful?"

The standardized tests have already caused controversy in New York, as teachers are fighting to ensure the scores are not made public. The news provider reports that the city still wants to release the teaching ranking despite officials deeming them flawed this past spring.

 

Since the inception of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, states have been subjecting students to standardized tests in order to gauge performance. There are a variety of standardized tests available such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) and the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT 10), but some states are looking to adopt unified standards.

The Common Core State Standards initiative has been adopted by 38 states thus far, with the goal of providing a clear understanding of how students in certain areas match up against the rest of the nation. States that have not yet chosen to adopt the standards include Washington, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, Maine, Virginia, Alabama, Texas and Alaska.

The standards' website suggests that adopting this form of testing could be beneficial to schools, as they provide understandable content through building on the strengths of current state standards. There is also evidence to prove that they work in determining whether or not students are prepared for college.

 

Standardized tests are used to gauge students' academic performance against the rest of the country. With the No Child Left Behind Act, it's mandatory that all public school pupils take a standardized test in order to determine if their school systems are teaching them the things they need to succeed in academia.

While math and reading are a big focus of standardized tests, Stephanie Rossi, a teacher at Wheat Ridge High School in Colorado said she believes that social studies should be a focus in state standardized testing, according to Colorado's NBC affiliate, 9 News.

"If we're making decisions based upon a state assessment, then there should be state assessments in all curricular areas," Rossi told the news provider. "Don't exclude some and highlight others, because then you're distinctly sending a message that these core areas matter and these are secondary."

As of now, the state has the Colorado Student Assessment Program, which focuses on reading, writing, math and science for grades 3 through 10.