DATE:
Thursday, November 21, 2019
TO:
All Elementary Principals
FROM:
Shelley Nordick, Ph.D., Administrator of Teaching and Learning
Ben Jameson, Director of Evaluation, Research and Accountability
SUBJECT:
Preparing for Middle-of-the-Year Acadience Reading Benchmark Testing
The middle-of-the-year Acadience Reading Benchmark window opens December 2, 2019 and closes January 31, 2020. We are once again looking forward to working with you, your faculty, and your students to have a smooth benchmark administration window. We want our students to have the best opportunity possible to demonstrate their learning so that you and your teachers have the most accurate and reliable data with which to make important instructional decisions.
The Evaluation, Research & Accountability Department will once again be sending out three teams of testers to each school to complete benchmark testing. There are a few reminders and recommendations that schools should be aware of when it comes to Acadience Reading benchmark testing:
- Schools should already have their Acadience Reading MOY testing date. Principals or their designees are encouraged to schedule individual classes carefully, keeping in mind recess and lunch schedules as well as rotation schedules for each teacher and classroom. Schools should fill out the school schedule template on Google Drive that Shannon Johnson has shared with you.
- Schools should schedule an open space with room for 10 testers to spread out. School library media centers are preferred. Smaller rooms or classrooms get noisy and it is often difficult for testers to hear soft-spoken students’ responses, which can affect their assessment performance because testers can score only what they hear. We realize that using the library media center cuts into teachers’ rotations as well and we apologize for this inconvenience. Some schools have been creative in compensating for this inconvenience by creating a mobile library with popular book selections and bringing it to individual classrooms on the day of testing.
- School faculty and staff should avoid using or walking through the library media center during testing. Students are easily distracted by people they know, noises or adult talking. With each testlet in Acadience Reading being only a minute long, a distraction can affect a student’s ability to respond in a timely manner, which could bring down his/her score.
- If at all possible, we would ask schools to refrain from using the intercom during testing.
- Each school should provide a runner, often the literacy assistant, who brings classes into the testing area and who sends students to individual testers as they transition from one student to another. The runner is crucial to helping the testing team stay on schedule. Without a runner, a member of the team must fill that role, which means that there is one less tester and we run the risk of falling behind.
Each elementary school has been a wonderful host to our testers and we appreciate your time and preparation that go into each Acadience Reading benchmark administration. It is our goal to make benchmark testing go as smoothly and be the least intrusive as possible so that you and your teachers have accurate and consistent assessment data with which to help and support your students.
If you have any questions or concerns about these reminders, please contact Ben Jameson (801-567-8243) or Shannon Johnson (801-567-8873).
