National Conference on Student Assessment June 20, 2016 National Center and State Collaborative/Multi-Stage Alternate Assessment National Conference on Student Assessment June 20, 2016 Phyllis Lynch, PhD Director, Instruction, Assessment and Curriculum Rhode Island Department of Education

What’s new? Arizona Arkansas CNMI Connecticut District of Columbia Guam Idaho Indiana Maine Montana New Mexico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Virgin Islands Over 29,000 students across the NCSC Operational states participated in the NCSC Alternate assessments in 2014-2015. MSAA Operational Administration 2015-2016 is complete Open source platform performed well without disruption or malfunctions Feedback on enhanced assessment features and user interface improvements was positive ‘Administration’ functions continue to be the most prevalent areas requiring user support Arizona Arkansas CNMI District of Columbia Guam Maine Maryland Montana Rhode Island South Dakota Tennessee Virgin Islands MSAA – 12 states

What’s new? After the 2014-2015 Administration some NCSC states transitioned to the Multi-State Alternate Assessment (MSAA) and others pursued assessment options as individual states. NCSC provided states access to the NCSC Assessment System through licensing options to support post NCSC transitions. To date six states have accessed the aspects of the NCSC Assessment System For more information regarding the licensing of the NCSC system and/or test content, please contact Patricia Richard at edCount Management at prichard@edcount.com or (202) 288-5144.

What’s on the horizon? Upgrade to TAO 3.1 Stage Adaptive testing Expand approved devices to include tablets/ipads Expand the number of compatible assistive technology devices Continue to research visual display of items and scrolling Enhance functionality of administrative functions of platform

Open Source and Interoperability The NCSC Assessment System includes test creation and delivery, scoring, and accessibility and accommodation functionality. The enhancements to the system developed during the project include: Creation of a system to manage users and organizations and track progress; Addition of assessment features for user accessibility, including alternate color themes, answer masking, audio player, line reader, and magnification; Development of evidence upload functionality to capture and upload student work; Presentation of content on printable PDFs for paper-based administration; Improvement and expansion of delivery and navigation tools, such as bookmarking to allow users to mark an item for later review. NCSC Assessment System options available to states includes NCSC open source platform and assessment content NCSC assessment content only NCSC open source assessment platform

Standards Used in Development of the NCSC Assessment System QTI APIP – Item and accessibility content SEDS – Data standard for student and results data HTML5 – Web standard for cross-browser and platform support SQL – Data standard to allow other systems to access student performance data LTI – could be used in the future to launch formative tests from the platform

Opportunities Possible cost savings because there are no licensing fees Because the full code is freely available, states have the flexibility and control to adapt, revise, or expanded as needed. Benefit from others who are using the open-source system by sharing code changes/improvements. A single system for all state assessments creating a common user experience for school and district users

Challenges Many states do not have the technical expertise to maintain assessment systems Costs of hosting, maintenance, help desk support, and improvements to system True interoperability has not been fully realized Effective mechanism for open source community to truly capitalize on each others efforts. The assessment platform, based on the open-source TAO system Test administrator portal based on the open-source Drupal CMS technology.

Accessibility Most major types of AT were reported as being successfully used by the students. Student response method varied 59.4% used a mouse and the computer 20% used a touch screen or gestures/pointing to screen 14.5% provided a verbal response 2.0% circled the correct responses on the paper/pencil version of the test 0.5% used eye gaze to respond to items 0.1% used a scanning device 0.1% used a clock scanner with a switch 3.4% were in the category of “other”

Accessibility - Challenges Balancing test security as teachers need access to prepare supports for some students Visual display of some items created the need for scrolling Tablets not currently supported Compatibility with AAC devices for small percentage of students “Hand over hand” prohibitions were most often cited as a barrier – which have been in common use in past AA-AAS. Only 13% of students in this population are using AT to access the curriculum according to LCI data.