1. South Dakota Department of Education WriteToLearn Gay Pickner Director of Assessment June 22, 2011

2. History Summative Writing Assessment State requirement for writing Grades 5,7,10 Student were administered this assessment once in February Received results in the Fall

3. Needing a change Started with an RFP in 2009 WriteToLearn was awarded the contract The rationale for the change in this assessment was to place a greater focus on the writing process instead of students’ scores.

4. WriteToLearn Online tool for building writing skills and developing reading comprehension – Writing instruction through practice – Reading comprehension through summarization – Immediate, automated evaluation with targeted feedback Six traits of writing Summary quality and missing information Grammar, spelling, redundancy, off-topic sentences, …

5. Pilot Project Throughout the spring testing window, teachers were able to set the parameters of how a student used the WriteToLearn program, including – the scoring thresholds, – the number of revisions allowed, and – the prompts selected. Because of this flexibility, the South Dakota Department of Education did not collect student scores. Rather, compliance was based strictly on student participation. The rationale for this change in the writing assessment was to place a greater focus on the writing process instead of students’ scores. With this shift to a benchmark assessment model, teachers are afforded the flexibility to use the WriteToLearn program as an instructional tool to support their own classroom writing instruction.

6. First full year of implementation Continued with grades 5, 7, 10 Three testing windows (fall, winter, spring) Throughout all testing windows, teachers were able to set the parameters of how a student used the WriteToLearn program, including – the scoring thresholds, – the number of revisions allowed, and – the prompts selected. Because of this flexibility, the South Dakota Department of Education did not collect student scores. Rather, compliance was based strictly on student participation.

7. Highlights Looking strictly at public schools…this fall the state as a whole was at 91% compliance. During the winter window this was up to 95%. During the fall window 33,184 students completed 125,776 drafts (about 4 per student). In terms of usage, 33,825 students completed 259,065 drafts (about 8 per student) during the winter window. – This is not cumulative with the fall window. This past testing window, usage more than doubled.

8. Concerns Printing of reports Schools with no internet connections (our Colonies) Teacher not agreeing with scoring

9. Contacts Gay Pickner-Director of Assessment – Gay.Pickner@state.sd.us Gay.Pickner@state.sd.us – 605-773-3247 Erin Larsen-WTL Program Manager – Erin.Larsen@state.sd.us Erin.Larsen@state.sd.us – 605-773-2533