1. 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

2. 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
MSAA Operational Administration 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

3. What’s new?
After the 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 or (202)

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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”

10. 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.