June 2004 — Advertorial
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Connecting People and Information to Improve Student Achievement
At the center is the student and the informed instructor in the classroom, but the student's parents are kept up to date not only with information about how she is doing, but also with specific activities to help at home. Without the connection through the student information system, these activities would be overwhelming for a teacher to do with all of his or her students.There is a suite of products now available to school districts that enables teachers and administrators to share this vision of connection today. Concert - a Student Information, Assessment and Instruction Suite - connects these four components so that data flows seamlessly among them to fulfill the vision we saw of Emma illustrated above. Concert takes its already powerful student information system and existing instructional management solution and ties that with an enhanced Web-based assessment system and data analysis tool for a solution tailored for enhancing student progress in this time of accountability.
Changing Roles of Testing & Technology
As noted above, Web-based testing programs and data analysis tools are relatively new in education. It is important to take a look at where these tools are now and where they may be going. The emphasis on student progress as measured by the statewide testing programs demanded by state accountability systems has impacted schools significantly as the No Child Left Behind Act has been implemented. This pressure is enormous, and educators are searching for ways to increase student achievement and close the achievement gap between and among disparate groups as measured by these tests before testing requirements are in place for the 2005-2006 school year.
Using standards-based instruction as the basis for accountability has focused the attention of legislators, parents, educators and students on student performance. In the past, that assessment was delivered only on end-of-year, summative statewide tests. While high-stakes assessment is getting the attention, educators are realizing that one rearview-mirror look at students is too little, too late to allow teachers to modify their instruction. To ensure that students are making progress in mastering the standards, teachers need to know how the students are doing more than once a year. Technology can play a key role here. A Web-based assessment program that is tied to standards and allows educators to create tests and then see the results arrayed in various ways is proving to be a powerful tool.
Research is showing that success in student achievement is centered on continuously monitoring performance - finding out often what a student knows and is able to do. These assessments from multiple sources need to be tied to the state standards and test objectives, as well as connected to the student information system.
A good Web-based assessment system such as Concert Assessment provides educators with a tool to create tests tied to their district and state standards, which can be delivered either online or on paper. From the instructional perspective, by testing periodically, teachers and administrators can track student progress standard by standard and student by student.
The system should be able to be used in two ways: district deployment or teacher deployment.
