September 2001 — Software/Courseware
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Focus on Assessment Tools
It didn't take long, but technology has consumed education. It's hard to imagine a classroom today without a computer or a student that d'esn't have Internet access at home. These changes in education have created exciting, new assessment tools for students and educators to work with that benefit everyone. These tools are making teaching simpler and more rewarding for instructors, because they can now concentrate more on their students' education and not on creating documents. This month's Focus On represents only a handful of the assessment tools that exist for the different areas of education to make the lives of students and educators easier.
Teachers can now assess the reading
readiness skills of pre-kindergarten through third-grade students 
with Renaissance Learning, Inc.'s STAR Early Literacy. This
quick and simple computerized assessment tool is a computer-adaptive
assessment and database that helps educators identify a student's
command of phonemic awareness, phonics, general readiness,
graphophonemic knowledge, comprehension, structural analysis and
vocabulary skills in approximately 10 minutes. STAR Early
Literacy requires minimal tea-cher assistance while a student takes
the 25-question assessment. Each test item consists of a combination
of audio instructions; on-screen prompts of either text or graphics;
and three answer choices containing pictures, letters, words or
sentences. To reduce frustration, the questions continually adjust in
difficulty based on the student's previous answer. Students also go
through a brief mouse-training program and practice test before they
begin the actual assessment to ensure their comfort with the program.
The comprehensive package is designed to accelerate learning and
student achievement in reading, math and writing.
In today's fast-paced society nothing is more important than increasing the communication between teachers and parents. And helping to enhance this home communication, GradeQuick 6 from Jackson Software, Inc. includes new enhancements that enable instructors to track skills, mastery levels, state standards and objectives. This detailed information also enhances GradeQuick's Web reports using Edline, a provider of secure K-12 online solutions. With just a click, teachers can easily post Grade- Quick's customizable reports online so families can view secure, detailed up-to-date information from home. The program allows teachers to communicate important, private messages to parents such as their student's grades, attendance, discipline, homework, calendars and more. The detail of the student's work contained in GradeQuick is also accessible from Jackson SiteReporter.
In addition, GradeQuick gives administrators real-time access to current, detailed school-wide data such as eligibility lists, honor rolls, or attendance counts, as well as up-to-the-minute performances of any student. Its new skills assessments also enhance SiteReporter's customizable reports, which are used as Report Cards in many schools. Other schools use them as Interim Progress Reports and then transfer the GradeQuick data to their Student Information System for their official report cards. And because GradeQuick provides seamless integration with most student information systems, grades or attendance from the program can be used by the administrative software as needed.
