1. Rhode Island’s Transition to Common Core through Assessment
4/20/2019
Rhode Island’s Transition to Common Core through Assessment
Amanda Smith: Rhode Island Interim Assessment Program Manager, Measured Progress
Jessica Brown, PhD: Assessment Specialist, Rhode Island Department of Elementary & Secondary Education

2. Rhode Island Demographics
4/20/2019
Rhode Island Demographics
143,000 students
300 schools
50 Local Education Agencies (LEAs)
14,000 teachers
Despite the state’s small size, it has a diverse, urban population. Rhode Island is one of the top ten urban-concentrated states – 20% of students live in two cities (Providence, Central Falls). The state is home to a large number of recent immigrants and first-generation Americans – 6% of Rhode Island students are LEP. Diversity – 22% of students are Hispanic, 8% are African-American

3. Race to the Top Initiative RI Strategic Plan
4/20/2019
RI Strategic Plan
Race to the Top
Initiative
Transforming Education in Rhode Island
2010, $75 million RTTT, RIDE Strategic Plan = four-year initiative. Goals are to strengthen teacher effectiveness, narrow achievement gaps, and improve student outcomes. One aspect of Strategic Plan is RIIA Program.

4. 4/20/2019
RI Strategic Plan
LEAs participating in Transforming Education in Rhode Island
To meet goals of RIDE Strategic Plan, state and Local Education Agencies are pooling resources - developing tools to help every school, teacher, and student in Rhode Island. Has seen strong buy-in from the LEAs; 48 out of 50 of them—96 percent—have signed on to the plan.
96%

5. Five Components of the Strategic Plan
4/20/2019
Five Components of the Strategic Plan
Human Capital Development
Educator Evaluation
Standards and Curriculum
School Transformation and Innovation
Instructional Improvement
Two aspects of Strategic Plan are CCSS focused: Standards and curriculum – Rhode Island is training educators to understand and use the CCSS. By 2014, all schools will have effective curricula aligned to the Common Core and students will take tests built to the new standards and curriculum.
Instructional improvement system – Developing an interim assessment system built to the CCSS, as well as new data systems to manage information about student learning. A primary goal of this aspect of the strategic plan is to help schools get ready for the transition to curriculum, instruction, and assessments based on the CCSS. In addition, the new data management system will give teachers and parents better access to data about student achievement.

6. Instructional Improvement Initiative
4/20/2019
Instructional Improvement Initiative
Currently many state-sponsored initiatives that Rhode Island educators are engaged in to transition to the CCSS, including workshops to understand the framework of the standards, collaborative curriculum development, and various online resources. LEAs have written CCSS aligned curriculum that has instructional resources but no assessment - Interim project helps fill that gap. The assessments and items will help educators understand the CCSS and the level of rigor that is expected, to enable them to make changes in curriculum and instruction mandated by the Common Core. Once instruction is aligned to the new standards, the assessments will support instructional approaches for individual children and groups of students. The standardized assessments currently in use don’t generally contain content as rigorous as the Common Core standards.
In addition there is high demand for online testing options for students to prepare them for PARCC. Also demand for testing options for the new Science and Social Studies standards that RI recently adopted. These factors combined really provided the impetus for RI to decide to use assessments as ONE way to help prepare educators and students for the CCSS and related assessments.

7. Interim Assessment Program
4/20/2019
Interim Assessment Program
RIIA system enables users to build, save, administer assessments, and score open response items
Test Construction Tool
Test Management System
Online Testing
Scanning
Scoring
Reporting
Overview of RIIA project and components: TCT to create assessments, TM for student level data – assignment and scheduling, online or paper testing, option to scan paper, all scoring done locally. Reporting through state’s Instructional Management System – allows for interim assessment reports to be housed with data from other assessments.

8. Interim Assessment Program
4/20/2019
Interim Assessment Program
Two Major Components
Fixed Form Assessments
Test Construction Tool
Characteristics of Both Components
Grades 3-11
CCSS Items in ELA and Math
Online or paper-based administration
System gives 2 different assessment options – FF created by RIDE and MP content specialists and TCT bank of items to make locally-created tests. All assessments can be given either online or paper based – allows for schools with technology to move ahead and prepare for online assessments, but also doesn’t leave out those with fewer technological resources. We anticipated a lot of paper-based testing, especially in first year, but opposite occurred and over 90% tested online.

9. Interim Assessment Program
4/20/2019
Interim Assessment Program
Fixed Form Assessments
Purpose: Inform instruction by providing an indication of student knowledge on selected critical content and skills in the Common Core State Standards
Administered 3 times during school year
Fall
Winter
Spring
Fixed Form purpose and administration plan. Same standards addressed in each administration with unique items. Expect to see progress throughout the year.

10. Interim Assessment Program
4/20/2019
Interim Assessment Program
Test Construction Tool
Locally-created tests by teachers and/or school and district administrators
Math & ELA: CCSS aligned content
Science: NGSS standards
Social Studies: RI state standards
Performance tasks
TCT = bank of items in 4 content areas. Tool allows users to create own tests based on set of criteria/filters. Flexibility to generate a quiz that targets specific standards to check student understanding, create end of unit exam, even for district to create tests for all schools. Allow teachers to use CCSS aligned items in classroom at anytime. Math and ELA items are different than ones on fixed form. Adding Science and Social Studies through school year, and PTs.

11. Interim Assessment Items
4/20/2019
Interim Assessment Items
Specifically measure CCSS
Built from the ground up
Incorporated RI teacher review
We developed items from the ground up, based on the Common Core State Standards, as opposed to back-aligning existing items. All items developed with significant input from RI content specialists – able to focus on what RI students need to know and how best to shift item writing from NECAP state assessment and standards to CCSS structure, language, and rigor. Items reviewed by teacher committees – took some calibration as there was initial surprise at level of rigor and changes from NECAP items

12. Interim Assessment Items
4/20/2019
Interim Assessment Items
ELA
CCSS Organizing Elements in Reading
Balance of Literary and Informational texts to mimic CCSS emphasis by grade
Paired reading selections
Item Types
Multiple Choice
Evidence-Based Selected Response
Constructed Response
Items for ELA (fixed form and TCT) built around CCSS Organizing Elements. Item development followed CCSS emphasis on Informational texts at grades 6 and up. New concepts to RI students: paired reading selections, new item type: EBSR – two part MC, second part requires student to use evidence from text to support answer in first part.

13. Interim Assessment Items
4/20/2019
Interim Assessment Items
Math
Five to seven Common Core clusters were chosen to be measured at each grade level
The majority of the clusters are those identified by PARCC as major clusters in the PARCC Model Content Frameworks for Mathematics
Item Types
Multiple Choice
Short Answer
Constructed Response
Items for ELA (fixed form and TCT) built around major clusters in CCSS as identified by PARCC. No new item types, just variety of open response options: 1 and 2 point short answer and 4 point constructed response

14. Assessments in Rhode Island
4/20/2019
Assessments in Rhode Island
2012
2013
2014
2015
NECAP: 2005-Fall 2014
RI Interim Assessments: Fall ongoing
Interim provides overlap between current state assessment program (NECAP) and PARCC. Transition out of NECAP, away from state GLEs – schools and districts start to incorporate CCSS using RIIA – when PARCC is in place, RIIA will continue
PARCC

15. Interim Assessment Implementation
4/20/2019
Interim Assessment Implementation
Fixed Form:
Year 1 – complete
Year 2 and on - Adjustments based on local feedback
Test Construction Tool:
Enhancements to tool
Increase item counts
Finished first year of fixed-form at end of April. Lessons learned – have had to adjust purpose after Year 1. Intent was to have the tests scaled so that we could monitor progress. Feedback from stakeholders: good content, but too long, snags with data feed and technology are frustrating. Making changes to design for following years - shorter forms, longer administration windows. Continuing with three opportunities to take tests. Educators will need to be careful about the inferences they draw from the results. RIDE is working to encourage districts and schools to shift to RIIA and replace other interims. TCT released in spring, people becoming familiar with it, using items to understand how CCSS differs from NECAP. Start of school year, more functionality in tool (additional filters and criteria for building tests), and continually adding more items over the summer and next school year.

16. Year 1 Accomplishments & Future work
4/20/2019
Year 1 Accomplishments & Future work
Familiarized teachers and students with rigor of CCSS items
Used assessments to inform instruction
Prepared educators for switch to PARCC assessment
Trained educators on scoring and analysis
Prepared students and teachers for online assessment
We will continue these efforts going forward
The interim assessment program helps districts and schools gain an understanding of students’ knowledge of the Common Core standards, and identify areas that need more attention. Allows for teachers to adjust instruction in preparation for PARCC assessments. Additionally, with teachers scoring student work we realized an opportunity to further train on the CCSS. In scoring workshops conducted over the past school year, we heard feedback from teachers around the changes in scoring criteria – require higher level of detail, more depth of understanding in student responses. Teachers were grateful for the opportunity to work with scoring rubrics for CCSS items. In fact, seeing low scores overall on open response this year – to be expected as CCSS is integrated in classrooms, we’ll look for improvements. The RIIA program has also provided a valuable opportunity for RI students to begin testing online in a low-stakes environment. Program has been cited as a useful tool to help educators “see” CCSS in action, given districts and schools concrete examples of the transition from RI standards to CCSS.

17. 4/20/2019
Thank you!