Accountability

In April 2010, the Board of Regents amended the way teachers in New York State are evaluated. Starting in 2011/2012, classroom teachers will receive one of four ratings: Highly Effective, Effective, Developing and Ineffective. One factor on which teachers must be evaluated is student growth, which is defined as change in student achievement between at least two points in time. This can be from a student’s score on a State assessment, or other measures of student learning. Initially, test scores can be up to 20% of a teacher’s evaluation and change over time up to 25%.^*

TestWiz can report on multiple assessments and student performance changes all on the same report. With the click of a few buttons, administrators can easily look at trends by classroom, teacher, building or for the district at any single point, or over time. Some examples of this include: graphing total student performance by teacher on a single report, pulling a list of teachers all on one report and their scores on any test, graphing one or more teachers by item on any test, tracking teachers longitudinally or even filtering by any single teacher or principal to look at any test or subtest.

Formative Assessment

During the NYS DOE legislation update on 7/16/2010, Ira Schwartz and Dr. Ken Wagner mentioned that they anticipated an increased need for formative assessment and using multiple measures.^*

TestWiz users can process local benchmark tests with our state-of-the-art plain paper scanning technology. By telling our software a little about the test, users can print custom student answer docs on copy paper which can be easily scanned. Once scanned, the information can be viewed alongside state and literacy test results, even on the same report. Our new Correlation Report allows educators to compare any two assessments to see if they align. So, users can now compare a local formative assessment to a state test to see if they have a strong correlation and predict performance on the correlated test.

Response to Intervention

“Effective July 1, 2012 [in NYS], all school districts need to have an RTI program in place as part of the process to determine if a student in grades K-4 is a student with a learning disability in the area of reading.” [8 NYCRR section 100.2(ii)] According to the National Center on Response to Intervention, there are 4 key components to RTI. They include:

• A school-wide, multi-level instructional and behavioral system for preventing school failure;
• Screening;
• Progress Monitoring; and
• Data-based decision making for instruction, movement within the multi-level system, and disability identification (in accordance with state law).

Through the use of our assessment processing, scoring and reporting tool, TestWiz, users can track multiple interventions concurrently, identify students for interventions and assess progress over time. TestWiz completely supports RTI:

• View multiple assessment results all on one report (e.g. formative, state and literacy tests).
• TestWiz supports a multi-tiered intervention model.
• Decisions to target instruction can be made immediately by generating reports “on the fly.” Access to test results is immediate.
• Student assessment data can easily be accessed by all assigned teachers working with a student.
• TestWiz supports almost all types of testing.
• Reading disabilities can be easily diagnosed and instructional groups can be simply identified.
• Parent reports can easily be created.
• Educators can compare any two assessments to see if they correlate.
• Various interventions can be compared on the same report.
• All interventions can be stored in one place and can be sorted and filtered.
• Progress can be monitored.
• Interventions can be tracked longitudinally.

Race to the Top

NEW YORK WINS NEARLY $700 MILLION IN RttT COMPETITION

“New York State’s Race to the Top application incorporates reforms enabled by legislation enacted earlier this year. The legislation: (1) establishes a new teacher and principal evaluation system that makes student achievement data a substantial component of how educators are assessed and supported; (2) raises New York’s charter school cap from 200 to 460 and enhances charter school accountability and transparency; (3) enables school districts to enter into contracts with Educational Partnership Organizations (the term for non-profit Education Management Organizations in New York State) for the management of their persistently lowest-achieving schools and schools under registration review; and (4) appropriates $20.4 million in capital funds to the State Education Department to implement its longitudinal data system.”^**

TestWiz supports New York’s new teacher and principal accountability requirements through a variety of aggregated and disaggregated reports that can easily be generated on the fly. Both list and graphical displays are available for analysis. Through our assessment tool, administrators can compare multiple buildings or assessments all on one report and filter down to the strand, learning standard, student, demographic or customized sub-group. Educators can hone in on the lowest achieving student populations and can create comparison groups to spot trends. TestWiz users have the ability to track longitudinal data on multiple tests concurrently, even on the same report.