FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

I am excited to report that sample assessment items and performance tasks in English language arts/literacy and mathematics are now available on the Smarter Balanced website. The sample items and tasks provide a preview of the types of questions that students will experience in the 2014-15 school year when the assessments are implemented.

We hope the sample items and tasks will be a resource for teachers, students, and anyone interested in learning more about the Common Core and Smarter Balanced assessments. The sample items demonstrate the innovative features of online assessment—including advanced question types that assess a deeper understanding of content and skills than would otherwise be possible with traditional items.

They also illustrate the rigor of the Common Core State Standards and how they will be assessed. For example, performance tasks show how students will be expected to analyze information from multiple sources and apply their knowledge to real-world problems.

More information on the sample items and tasks is included in this month’s newsletter, and I encourage everyone to visit www.smarterbalanced.org, explore the sample items and tasks, and provide your feedback.

INSIDE THE STATE-LED CONSORTIUM

On October 1, Smarter Balanced marked its two-year anniversary. During the past 24 months, this state-led effort has made tremendous progress toward developing a next-generation assessment system.

Throughout the summer and fall, educators from Governing States have worked with experts to write and review items and performance tasks for the Pilot Test in early 2013. Thousands of schools across member states will be able to pilot the assessments beginning in February 2013, and Governing States will soon approve a preliminary summative assessment design.

To help districts prepare for the assessment implementation, new hardware purchasing guidelines were made available to help states and districts plan for instructional technology purchases. This fall, Smarter Balanced will release minimum technology specifications based on the input received from the Technology Readiness Tool.

In June, Governing States approved the Formative Assessment Master Work Plan, which maps out the key activities and timing of the formative assessment work ahead, including the creation of a digital library of formative assessment resources.  The Consortium will recruit State Leadership Teams and State Networks of Educators to identify and evaluate formative assessment practices in 2013.

Smarter Balanced has also engaged higher education faculty in item writing and review and the drafting of achievement level descriptors to ensure that the grade 11 summative assessment provides evidence that students are college-ready. The Consortium continues to work closely with the broader education field to share our work and gather feedback.

Smarter Balanced member states and partners are critical to the Consortium’s success. In the next two years, Smarter Balanced will Pilot and Field Test the assessments, engage teachers in professional learning, and implement the final assessment system.

SAMPLE ITEMS AND PERFORMANCE TASKS NOW AVAILABLE

Developed in collaboration with educators and content experts, the sample items and performance tasks are meant to help teachers, administrators, and policymakers better understand the Common Core State Standards and prepare for the implementation of the Smarter Balanced assessments.

The samples include nearly 50 assessment items and performance tasks, including examples of innovative, technology-enhanced items that take advantage of computer-based administration to assess a deeper understanding of content and skills than would otherwise be possible with traditional item types. In addition, sample performance tasks showcase the extended classroom-based activities students will experience as part of the Smarter Balanced assessment system.

Users can explore the sample items and performance tasks by grade band, content claim, and item type. Each item includes detailed information about the standards and assessment targets being measured. In addition, most selected response and technology enhanced items can be automatically scored, providing instant feedback to users. Scoring rubrics are available for constructed-response items and performance tasks. Select English language arts/literacy items include a text complexity analysis that explains how quantitative and qualitative factors were evaluated to determine the appropriate grade level of a passage.

The sample items and performance tasks do not include accessibility and accommodations tools that will be available when students take the assessments. The sample items and performance tasks also represent only a small fraction of the thousands of items that will be available when pilot testing begins in February 2013.

Smarter Balanced welcomes feedback and questions on the sample items and performance tasks. Comments can be submitted through an online form.

SUPPORTING CLASSROOM TEACHERS

Exploring the Mathematics Sample Items and Tasks with Shelbi Cole, Director of Mathematics

The Smarter Balanced sample mathematics items demonstrate a number of important aspects of the Common Core State Standards, including how students are expected to apply more sophisticated mathematical concepts as they progress through school. The items also show how technology can be used to measure problem solving and communicating reasoning skills in ways that paper-and-pencil assessments never could.

Students will be able to interact with problems and solve them in multiple ways. For example, “water tank” is a high school item that asks students to calculate the radius of a cylinder by manipulating liquid between two containers. Students can experiment with different quantities in each container to determine the relationship between the two volumes.  This kind of interactivity is only possible through a computer-based test.

Constructed-response items—like “used car”—show how students will be required not only to solve a problem correctly, but give sufficient reasoning to support their conclusion. Performance tasks ask students to analyze multiple sources of information to solve a problem. In “crickets,” a high school performance task, students will model the relationship between temperature and the number of chirps made by crickets, using graphs to show their analysis and support their conclusions. Performance tasks are designed to measure concepts that are difficult to assess through other item types. In the case of “crickets,” the task assesses a more global understanding that different mathematical models of a single phenomenon result from differences in the data themselves.

Finally, some sample mathematics items include short animations to support student understanding of the item’s context (e.g., “swimmers”), which may be particularly valuable for engaging students and for reducing the cognitive load associated with the language itself. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is designing its assessments to ensure that all students have the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

Learn more about the Smarter Balanced sample assessment items and performance tasks on our website.