District Approved Assessments. Assessments used within SLO’s will be District approved in conjunction with the Evaluation Review Committee (ERC). These assessments will include the key subject and grade-level content standards and curriculum that will be taught during the interval of instruction. When examining assessments for alignment, teachers and teacher teams should look for the following: • Items on the test should cover key subject/grade-level content standards. • No items on the test should cover standards that the course does not address. • Where possible, the number of test items should mirror the distribution of teaching time devoted to concepts or the curriculum focus. For example, if a foreign language teacher devotes almost equal amounts of time to developing students’ reading comprehension, listening comprehension, oral communication, and written communication skills, he or she should not use a test that devotes 90 percent of the test to reading comprehension. Instead, the distribution of the test should mirror instruction, meaning that about a quarter of the test should focus on each of the four skills listed above. • The items or tasks should match the full range of cognitive thinking required during the course. For example, if the main foci of the mathematics content standards are solving word problems and explaining reasoning, some questions or items on an assessment should require students to solve word problems and explain how they arrived at their answers. The assessment should require students to engage in higher-order thinking where appropriate. These items or tasks may require students to use reasoning, provide evidence, make connections between subjects or topics, critique, or analyze. • All District approved assessments will include the growth targets to be used in determining student growth. Assessments will be submitted to the teacher’s grade level principal(s) for approval. Principals will use the District’s rubric for Evaluating District Assessments. Student Growth Measures (SGM)/Student Learning Objectives (SLO)
District Approved Assessments. Assessments used within SLO’s will be District approved in conjunction with the Evaluation Review Committee (ERC) as well as the SLO Committee. These assessments will include the key subject and grade-level content standards and curriculum that will be taught during the interval of instruction. When examining assessments for alignment, teachers and teacher teams should look for the following: ● Items on the test should cover key subject/grade-level content standards. ● No items on the test should cover standards that the course does not address. ● Where possible, the number of test items should mirror the distribution of teaching time devoted to concepts or the curriculum focus. For example, if a foreign language teacher devotes almost equal amounts of time to developing students’ reading comprehension, listening comprehension, oral communication, and written communication skills, he or she should not use a test that devotes 90 percent of the test to reading comprehension. Instead, the distribution of the test should mirror instruction, meaning that about a quarter of the test should focus on each of the four skills listed above. ● The items or tasks should match the full range of cognitive thinking required during the course. For example, if the main foci of the mathematics content standards are solving word problems and explaining reasoning, some questions or items on an assessment should require students to solve word problems and explain how they arrived at their answers. The assessment should require students to engage in higher-order thinking where appropriate. These items or tasks may require students to use reasoning, provide evidence, make connections between subjects or topics, critique, or analyze. ● All District approved assessments will include the growth targets to be used in determining student growth. Assessments will be submitted to the teacher’s grade level principal(s) for approval.
