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Granite School District > Superintendent's Office > Sup’s Blog > Testing

Testing

Growth Percentiles

Welcome Back! I have had a lot of great feedback from the Educator Conference and the message regarding growth for our students. Many of you have asked for an explanation of Student Growth Percentile (SGP) and the Median Growth Percentile (MGP). We will have many more conversations about this, but here is a quick video that does a great job of explaining it.

We are excited for a great year and look forward to your success.

Question – Standards Based Grading

Dear Superintendent Bates,

I enjoyed your last message about the Granite Way for Everyone, and agree that having a plan is essential to our progress. With the end of term fresh on my mind I have been thinking a lot about report cards and how they represent student’s progress toward their individual plan for leaning. I have never liked the A,B,C grading system because I don’t think it provides enough information for the teachers and the parents. I think our online grade-book for parents is a great tool to help dig a little deeper into the data behind the grade, but even that can be sometimes be vague. For example, if my child got a 70% on a math test as a parent I wouldn’t know enough from that score to help my child. What I want to know is which areas and concepts do I need to help my child with. For that reason I have been a big fan of standard-based grading, and my question is this: is the district exploring this approach to grading? What problems do you see with transitioning to such an approach, and how would those problems be addressed?

Response – Granite District began exploring standards-based grading almost four years ago. With our focus on teaching the Utah core standards and commitment to regularly assessing student mastery of them, communicating students’ progress toward that end via report card grades has been the logical next step. A secondary standards-based committee was convened in 2011 and has continued ever since. We decided to concentrate on junior and senior high schools first given the current disconnect between proficiency on standards and the high-stakes nature of credits, GPAs, and graduation. We are also well aware that many individual elementary teachers, grade level teams and, in fact, whole schools, have intuitively and/or strategically already moved toward standards-based grade reporting at the elementary level.

Currently we are creating standards-based grading models to be piloted in various secondary situations. We are working on both implementation and communication plans for eventual movement to standards-based grading district wide.

Thanks for your question and to the Teaching & Learning Division for their help in responding.

Question – Future of Formative Assessments?

Question – Will we be using Acuity next year or the SAGE formative assessment piece?

Response – Granite District will not be using the Acuity delivery platform at all this coming year – neither for universal screening assessments nor district quarterly benchmarks. Our district-created quarterly benchmark assessments will be housed as a Granite specific library of assessments on the state SAGE Formative platform. Information and training in support of this change will be provided for both administrators and teachers as the school year begins.

Thanks for the question!

Question – SAGE and computer skills

Question – With the switch of end of year assessment coming, I would like to know what Granite School District and other Utah School Districts are doing regarding keyboarding and basic computer skills. It seems like SAGE is going to not only test students’ academic achievement, but will also assess their ability to use technology (in this case, a computer) efficiently and effectively. I know that part of our core standards includes keyboarding and computer skills, but it seems to me we need access to more resources in order to produce technological competent students. Is Granite School District looking to acquire a keyboarding/basic computer skills specialist who can teach these skills? Will it be the responsibility of the school’s STS? Teachers? It seems somewhat unfair to me that our students should be tested via technological devices without appropriate training, and that teachers’ pay should be partially determined by these results. What are we really assessing?

Response – It is true that the new SAGE assessment requires technology skills beyond those previously required by CRT administration – drag and drop, select text, work with graphs, for example. We have encouraged our teachers to introduce their students to the SAGE practice tests and familiarize them with the skills required of the new assessment; students can practice at home, and parents can become familiar with the new assessments as well. In fact, most students are far more technology savvy than are the adults in our system, and it is incumbent on all of us to provide repeated opportunities to learn and demonstrate learning through the use of appropriate technology, even when we lack expertise. STSs do have responsibility for some instruction, but that is instruction and support for teachers in better integrating technology into routine classroom instruction. Lastly, teacher pay is NOT currently impacted by SAGE results, although we expect it will be in the future. The legislature has pushed back this requirement for merit pay again this last legislative session.

Question – Performance Pay and Formative Assessments

Question – Now that we have a system in place to motivate teachers, when is there going to be something put in place to motivate the students? I can tell my third graders how important these tests are, but really they have nothing to lose if they don’t do their best. In the past I have had students that get on the computer and just click any answer. They don’t want to do these online tests and rush through them. Last year during my SEP’s I had students that had high Dibels scores, but low Acuity Language Arts scores. As I went over the data with these students and their parents I asked them if they read the stories on the Acuity test. Every single one of these students said that they didn’t take the time to read them. They just guessed. The test did not show what they knew. I think that this performance pay is deeply flawed if my pay raise is based on a group of 9 year-olds that could careless about their test scores. I can teach these kids the required curriculum, but I can’t make them take their time on the any of the tests. They don’t have anything to worry about if they fail. They just move on to the next grade. I’m the one who gets penalized. So I ask my question again, when is there going to be something put in place to motivate the students? Yes, the teachers need to do their part and be highly qualified, but students need to do their part too.

Response – I conclude from the subject line and the first sentence of your message that you, a teacher, finally have in place something to motivate you in your work – a performance pay system. I surely hope you find satisfaction and incentive in something greater than that. You then suggest that the scores your students generate on the language arts benchmark assessments have something to do with that system; this is incorrect. Results on the SAGE test will likely be tied to any future state performance pay plan, but the benchmark assessments are intended to be a tool for YOU, the classroom teacher. While they provide students the opportunity to practice with questions similar to those soon to be found on SAGE, it is our intent that the benchmark scores provide data for you and your grade level team – data which can suggest areas of instruction that require re-teaching, state standards that needn’t be addressed because students are already proficient in them, and indication of teaching that was effective and might be copied by a teacher who was less so in a particular area. As far as motivating students to do well on those benchmark assessments, the best motivator in a student’s academic life is a competent, caring teacher. I am confident that your students would have responded quite differently on the benchmarks had you begun the year with an explanation for the assessments by saying something similar to the following:

“Class, it’s the beginning of a new term, and today we’re going to the computer lab for something called a benchmark assessment in language arts. Let me tell you what you’ll see – about 25 questions that cover all the material I’m supposed to teach you this coming term. Now, I want you to help me do my job; I need you to give me some guidance so I earn my paycheck these next few months. Please try really hard to answer as many questions as you can. Even though we haven’t even studied any of that material yet, you’ll all be able to answer some of the questions anyway, and I don’t want to bore you by teaching things you already know. And guess what! At the end of the term we’ll go back to the lab and take another assessment on the same material that I’ve taught all term. I’ll want you to try really hard then, too; if you do, you’ll find out how much you really learned over these next nine weeks when we compare the scores for today to those a couple of months later. Also, just in case there’s something I taught that you still don’t understand on that second assessment, I’ll know what I need to re-teach a little differently to some of you so I guarantee you’re ALL ready for fourth grade next year. ”

I conclude with your final question: “When is there going to be something put in place to motivate the students?” My response: “Tomorrow morning. Motivation has been and continues to be something managed by the classroom teacher.”  In point of fact, this would be a great PLC discussion – since everyone on your team or department is teaching the same neighborhood of kids, what seems to be working for colleagues that you might adopt?

Question – SAGE testing

Question – With the switch of end of year assessment coming, I would like to know what Granite School District and other Utah School Districts are doing regarding keyboarding and basic computer skills. It seems like SAGE is going to not only test students’ academic achievement, but will also assess their ability to use technology (in this case, a computer) efficiently and effectively. I know that part of our core standards includes keyboarding and computer skills, but it seems to me we need access to more resources in order to produce technological competent students. Is Granite School District looking to acquire a keyboarding/basic computer skills specialist who can teach these skills? Will it be the responsibility of the school’s STS? Teachers? It seems somewhat unfair to me that our students should be tested via technological devices without appropriate training, and that teachers’ pay should be partially determined by these results. What are we really assessing?

Response – It is true that the new SAGE assessment will require students to do more than bubble in correct answers as they’ve become accustomed to doing on the CRT’s of the past; however, in Granite District, all students have exposure to a variety of technology experiences which will serve them well in adapting quickly to the SAGE administration. All Granite students participate in formative assessments administered online, and many regularly use the My Access writing tool which provides additional practice at using technology in the writing/response arena. Additionally, all Granite students use online textbooks and instructional resources in math and some also in English/language arts; these tools help develop a variety of technology skills in students of all ages. Granite District does not intend to hire specialists to address facility with technology on behalf of our students nor will STS’s be burdened with that added responsibility. Rather, we are confident that, once teachers have provided students an opportunity to become familiar with SAGE through the available practice tests, they will have little trouble navigating the SAGE test and probably will find it quite engaging. Our greater concern is whether or not they have been effectively taught and mastered the core concepts on which they will be assessed.

Thanks for your question.

Question – Merit Pay for Counselors

Question – When teachers get paid for their students’ performance, what will be the criteria used to pay counselors for their students’ performance?

Response – You appear to referring to the state’s plan to tie teacher evaluation – and ultimately compensation – to student achievement. The state plan hasn’t been completely formulated yet, but teachers will be accountable for state-mandated test scores, and teachers who do not teach those assessed subjects will be in some way accountable through shared attribution of those test scores or accountable to other sorts of assessment. It is the intent of the USOE to create a system of accountability for all educators that is rooted in academic achievement of students; it is likely that counselors will be included in that system in some way as it is developed.

Superintendent Snapshot – PERFECT ACT

Welcome to the latest superintendent snapshot where the superintendent recognizes two special students who received perfect scores on the ACT. If you have a question for the superintendent, please submit it here. Have a great weekend.

P.S. Abraham wasn’t really in an “animal training” course. His outfit was for spirit week at his school.