October 2004 — Advertorial

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The Evolution of Testing

Educators use the Achievement Series to:

  • Create test items
  • Select test items from different sources (including their own)
  • Collaborate on item bank creation
  • Align items and tests to national and state standards
  • Construct quizzes or tests
  • Collaborate with others to create tests
  • Create multiple versions of the same test
  • Administer a test online or on paper, or a combination of online and paper
  • Use plain-paper or Scantron-type scanners
  • View results in a variety of formats.

That is a tall order. Let’s look at just one of the many possible implementations of the Achievement Series.

A Scenario

The Summer. Ms. Hernandez is the curriculum director for math. Her district had purchased the Achievement Series from Scantron in the prior spring. During the summer, she and her committee studied the results of the statewide tests to look for areas in which students were not performing well. They re-examined their curriculum for how they were teaching those standards, as well as created additional instructional strategies and activities. They also decided to use formative assessment more frequently on these and a few other standards to determine if the new activities were having the desired results. This is where the Achievement Series came in. They were able to choose test items from different sources, not just those from their textbook publisher. These items were already aligned to their state standards. They also decided to create a few items of their own that were based on the new instructional activities. Because the entire system is online, the committee members could work from home and collaborate online to develop and review the items. They decided to make the tests available both online and on paper.

The Fall. Math teachers began to teach the new activities and pay attention to the areas that had been identified as weak. They also began to use the tests that Ms. Hernandez and her committee had constructed. The feedback from teachers was outstanding. Results from the tests that were administered online came back immediately. For those tests on paper, the only delay was getting access to the one scanner in the teachers’ lounge. During the October workday, Ms. Hernandez called a meeting of her committee that had worked during the summer. She had three questions for them:

  1. Are all the items and the tests measuring what they were supposed to measure?
  2. Are the new activities and the new emphasis on specific standards helping kids learn those standards?
  3. What changes need to be made in the instructional activities and tests for the standards that have been covered thus far, and what lessons have we learned that will affect the standards still to be taught during the rest of the year?

Using the Achievement Series’ reporting function and statistical analysis of how students responded to each item and each distracter, the committee could tell quickly if an item or even a distracter within the item was not effective. They also were able to tell how many students in each class were mastering the standards. Ms. Hernandez asked each committee member to meet with teachers who had fewer than 70% of their students pass the test over the targeted standards and talk about alternative strategies. The committee also decided to put together the results from the state-level tests with the formative testing completed in the Achievement Series. The combined results will provide even more powerful information for teachers.