MSAD 15 Assessments

10-11 Assessment Schedule

	Memorial & Russell	Dunn	Middle	High
September	AIMSweb Fall benchmark 9/1 to 10/1	NWEA - 9/13 to 10/8 AIMSweb Fall benchmark 9/1 to 10/1	NWEA - 9/13 to 10/8 AIMSweb Fall benchmark 9/1 to 10/1	NWEA - 9/13 to 10/8 - Grade 9
October		NECAP - 10/1 to 10/22 (Read-Math)	NECAP - 10/1 to 10/22 (Read-Math)	SAT/PSAT - 10/12 *Required Gr 10 and 11*
November
December	December 1 through February 4 - ELL Language test for English Language Proficiency December 1 through April 30 - Personalized Alternate Assessment Portfolio PAAP for grades 2-8, 10, 11
January	AIMSWEB Winter Benchmark 1/3 to 2/1	AIMSWEB Winter Benchmark 1/3 to 2/1 NAEP if randomly selected- 1/25 to 2/27	AIMSWEB Winter Benchmark 1/3 to 2/1 NAEP if randomly selected - 1/25 to 2/27	NWEA (RTI) Winter Benchmark 1/31 to 2/11 - Grade 9
February
March				Math-A (augmentation) and MHSA Science Tests - 3/28 through 4/8 Close of PAAP testing window
April	April 30, 2011 Close of PAAP testing window
May	AIMSWEB Spring benchmark 5/2 to 6/3	AIMSWEB Spring benchmark 5/2 to 6/3 NWEA - 5/2 to 6/3	AIMSWEB Spring benchmark 5/2 to 6/3 NWEA 5/2 to 6/3 NECAP/MEA Science - 5/9 through 5/20 Grades 5 & 8	ACCUPLACER NWEA - 5/2 to 6/3 (Grade 9) SAT - Saturday, May 7
June				SAT MAKEUP - Saturday, June 4

To download the 2010-11 assessment schedule, please click here.

• AIMSWEB

AIMSweb® is a scientifically based, formative assessment system that 'informs' the teaching and learning process by providing continuous student performance data and reporting improvement to parents, teachers, and administrators to enable evidence-based evaluation and data-driven instruction. AIMSweb® assesses literacy and math and will be used in the District as a Response to Intervention (RTI) benchmark screen three times annually. The assessments are intended to be quick screens administered without any modifications or adaptations to all students. Results will provide staff with information needed to program properly for all students.

• NWEA

Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) is an assessment administered twice a year in grades 3 through 10. NWEA assessments in reading and mathematics are computer-adaptive assessments that take approximately one hour each to complete. There are two types of scores that you may encounter when reviewing your child’s score: RIT and Lexile.

RIT
The RIT Scale is a curriculum scale that uses individual item difficulty values to estimate student achievement. An advantage of the RIT scale is that it can relate the numbers on the scale directly to the difficulty of items on the tests. In addition, the RIT scale is an equal interval scale. Equal interval means that the difference between scores is the same regardless of whether a student is at the top, bottom, or middle of the RIT scale, and it has the same meaning regardless of grade level.
RIT scales, like scales underlying most educational tests, are built from data about the performance of individual examinees on individual items. The theory governing scale construction is called Item Response Theory (IRT). NWEA uses a specific IRT model conceived by Danish mathematician, Georg Rasch, (1901-1980). Rasch is best known for his contributions to psychometrics, and his model is used extensively in assessment in education, particularly for skill attainment and cognitive assessments.
Characteristics of the RIT Scale include:

• It is an achievement scale.
• It is an accurate scale.
• It is an equal interval scale.
• It helps to measure growth over time.
• It has the same meaning regardless of grade or age of the student.

NWEA
Parent Toolkit

Lexile
The Lexile Framework for Reading is a scientific approach to reading measurement that matches readers to text. The Lexile Framework measures both reader ability and text difficulty on the same scale, called the Lexile scale. This approach allows educators to manage reading comprehension and encourage reader progress using Lexile measures and a broad range of Lexile products, tools and services.
As the most widely adopted reading measure in use today, Lexiles give educators the confidence to choose materials that will improve student reading skills across the curriculum and at home. Tens of thousands of books and tens of millions of articles have Lexile measures, hundreds of publishers Lexile their materials and all major standardized tests can report student reading scores in Lexiles. Additional information about lexiles can be found at: www.lexile.com

• New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP)

Maine has joined New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont in the yearly development and administration of the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP). This assessment is used by participating states to meet No Child Left Behind Act requirements for testing reading and mathematics once each year from grade 3 through grade 8. The states also include a writing assessment administered at grades 5 and 8. The first NECAP administration in Maine begins in October 2009.
NECAP assesses the learning of NECAP Grade Level Expectations (GLEs), which are located at http://www.maine.gov/education/lsalt/necap/standards.html.
NECAP is designed to assess learning from the prior year (teaching year) at the beginning of the next school year (testing year). Therefore, grades 2-7 reading and mathematics are assessed at the beginning of grades 3-8. Fourth and 7th grade writing is assessed at the beginning of grades 5 and 8. Maine’s personalized alternate assessment program (PAAP) will now be provided for students in grades 2-7.
FMI http://www.maine.gov/education/lsalt/necap/index.html.

• National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)

"Since 1969, the mission of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been to collect, analyze, and produce valid and reliable information about the academic performance of students in the United States in various learning areas. In 1990, the mission of NAEP was expanded to provide state-by-state results on academic achievement. The No Child Left Behind Act directs all schools in states receiving Title I funds to participate in NAEP assessments as needed.
NAEP assessments are statistical surveys that present a representative set of questions to a representative set of students in order to build a model of student performance. NAEP results predict what the student population knows and can do on the basis of a sampling of students and questions. These results are reported as average scaled scores accompanied by an estimation of the margin of error of the survey. Small differences in scores between populations may not mean that the students in those populations are performing at different levels; NAEP reports only statistically significant differences in scores. NAEP scores are reported for states and the nation; they cannot be generated for individual districts, schools, or students. They can, however, be generated for subgroups of the population; for instance, boys and girls or urban and rural students."
MSAD #15 will not receive individual student or school reports and therefore there will be no information to share with parents and students.
For this article and more information about NAEP testing visit the State website: http://www.maine.gov/education/mea/state_naep.htm

• Grade Level/Course

Each grade level K-12 has identified common grade level or course assessments. These assessments inform the staff of student progress as well as help the school district with identifying students who may be struggling and in need of additional support.

Updated July 20, 2010

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