Like you, teachers throughout the state are focused on increasing student achievement in mathematics. You may use a variety of data sources to monitor student progress and assist you with this goal. One such data source that is becoming more and more popular in schools is short cycle assessments. Short cycle assessments may be administered to students at intervals throughout the school year and can be used to provide you, students and parents with timely feedback about student learning. Students and parents use this feedback to benchmark learning. For you, the teacher, these assessments should serve to inform instruction – to assist you in determining how to move forward, or if there is a need to cycle back over a topic for more in-depth study.
Assessment items vary in format: multiple-choice, short answer or extended response, and vary in level of complexity from low to moderate to high. The Ohio Department of Education provides test blueprints for the OATs (Ohio Achievement Test) and the OGT (Ohio Graduation Test) which contain information about each grade level/subject area test, including the number of test items, the number of points for each test item, and details about determining the level of complexity of test items. The blueprints can be accessed directly from the ODE website using this link: http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=285&ContentID=7805&Content=69266.
In the world of short cycle assessments, teachers face the difficult task of constructing test items that reflect the learning to be measured, that meet the criteria of a well-constructed test item (equity, language, structure, rigor, validity, relevance of answer choices, etc.), and that provide important feedback to inform instruction. It isn’t easy to construct high quality test items, especially items that provide for a high level of complexity and rigor.
Testing companies invest millions of dollars in test item development and field testing, so why not use available items when you can? Many states provide released items on their websites (as does Ohio on the SUCCESS portal at http://portal.success-ode-state-oh-us.info/), but it is a tedious task to find the items and format them for use with students. Also, all states do not have the exact same skill expectations outlined in benchmarks and indicators at every grade level, so an item that is earmarked for 4th graders in one state may not be aligned to our 4th grade standards in Ohio. Alignment is critical to consider when selecting assessment items in order to maintain the rigor of instruction the Ohio standards demand.
While working with teachers in the region, the SMART Consortium staff members heard this loud and clear. To be more effective teachers want easy access to assessment items that can be used in short cycle assessments. In response to that need, we have started to compile banks of test items. The first sets of mathematics items are available on our website in two formats:
1. “ALL TEST ITEMS IN EXCEL” – by standard and grade level – These spreadsheets are titled “Full Question Bank”.
o You can access items for a specific grade level and standard to meet your assessment needs - such as “4th grade Geometry”.
o Each question bank spreadsheet includes test items, an indication of the alignment of the item to Ohio Benchmarks, alignment to the appropriate Ohio Grade Level Indicator(s), the answer if it is a multiple choice question, the state that released the item, and a brief description of the skill the item addresses. The “skill” drills down to the core of an item to make it easier for teacher to be very selective in reviewing test items.
o Test banks are accessible in “READ ONLY” format and require a password to access. This password is sent to your school district superintendent and curriculum director after your school districts' annual membership is confirmed. Click on the test bank link you want to view, and then save it to your desktop. Enter the password and open the spreadsheet for use.
o The spreadsheet allows you to “sort” the items by skill, by benchmark, by indicator or by state. You can manipulate each spreadsheet to meet your needs. To sort, simply click on the column you are interested in sorting by, then go to the toolbar of the spreadsheet and click on the “A/Z ↑” or “A/Z↓” to sort in ascending or descending order.
o Once you identify an item you would like to use, right click on the actual test item, click on “copy” and “paste” it into your own word document.
2. “TEST x” - If you do not want to select your own assessment items, open the mini-tests we have created. These tests have an average of 5 – 8 items and are listed by grade level and standard. The items may not necessarily focus on one particular skill so these mini-tests can be used for homework, at learning centers, or for remediation.
In addition to short cycle assessment, teachers can also use released test items in planning instruction, for review and to prepare students for the OATs. Using items in this manner allows students to “experience” the format of the OAT, practice items that have been on previous tests, and review their understanding of the concepts to be tested. The OATs and the OGT are aligned to Ohio benchmarks, so you should keep this in mind when selecting items for review. It has always been confusing to some teachers when an item is included in a grade level test, but is not aligned to a grade level indicator for that grade. Our question banks specify a skill for each item, but also align each item to the appropriate benchmark for the grade band.
Consider these examples:
A. In the Number Sense and Operations standard, benchmark C for the 5-7 grade band specifies: “Develop meaning for percents including percents greater than 100 and less than 1. There is no grade level indicator for this benchmark in the 5th grade or the 7th grade. One of the 6th grade indicators aligned to this benchmark reads: “Describe what it means to find a specific percent of a number using real-life examples.” While 6th grade teachers would focus on teaching this indicator, the benchmark itself is fair game for the OATs at the three grade levels in the band. Therefore, a 7th grade teacher might want to find items in the 6th grade question bank focused on this benchmark to use as review with the students as needed.
B. In the Number Sense and Operations standard, benchmark E for the 5-7 grade band specifies: “Use order of operations, including use of parenthesis and exponents to solve multi-step problems, and verify and interpret the results.” There is an indicator at grade 5, 6, and 7 for this benchmark so the topic is discussed in each grade of the band. What is important to notice, however, is how the indicators in each respective grade in the band differ in complexity from that in the other two grades. For benchmark E,
Ø In the 5th grade the indicator specifies: “Use order of operations, including use of parentheses, to simplify numerical expressions.”
Ø In the 6th grade the indicator specifies: “Use the order of operations, including the use of exponents, decimals and rational numbers, to simplify numerical expressions.”
Ø In the 7th grade, the indicator specifies: “Use order of operations and properties to simplify numerical expressions involving integers, fractions and decimals.”
Here, you can see that using the order of operations gets increasingly more difficult and complex across the grade levels. If your students are having trouble with the order of operations at the 7th grade level, you might want to go to the 5th and 6th grade test banks to pull practice items as a means of remediation and skill building. NOTE: If you do not have the ODE benchmark to grade level indicator alignment guide, you can access it at this site: http://ims.ode.state.oh.us/ODE/IMS/RRT/Tools/Content/alignment_toolkit_math.asp.
The banks of questions are a work in progress. We will continue to add aligned items as we find them. Some states had not yet released items from their 2009 test administration as of August 1, 2009.
This was a monumental task for the SMART Consortium staff, but we are committed to providing you and the rest of our Consortium members with this type of support. We’d love to hear from you as you use these items. If you find any errors in alignment, in the answers, or any other information as you work with the items we have included in the banks of questions, please email me with your thoughts (atabernik@wviz.org). Your suggestions and comments are welcomed and encouraged. We’d love to hear from you.
Have a great school year! Remember we are here for you!
Anna Maria Tabernik, Ph.D. (Tab)
Director of Professional Development
SMART Consortium