Paper and pencil for statewide tests will soon be a thing of the past for Michigan students as they prepare to take detailed during a roundtable Monday by the Michigan Department of Education.
The exam will replace the standardized MEAP and MME assessments in math, reading and writing, beginning during the 2014-2015 school year. The MEAP and MME assessments will still be given in science and social studies.
But unlike the tests students are used to, the new statewide exam will not have a common set of questions. Subsequent questions will be determined based on how a student answers the previous one. A correct answer yields a harder one. An incorrect responce yields an easier question. The goal is to have students get 50% of the exam correct, according to state officials.
The questions will range from multiple choice to essays and performance tasks, similar to assignment students get in class. And students will be given a scale score, similar to the MEAP, but also a performance score which will detail, for instance, how well they research.
Districts will still have the option of using paper and pencil assessments until 2017-2018. But state officials explained that the online alternate will provide quicker and more accurate results.
Michigan is among 40 states that have adopted the new test and is part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, a state-led effort to provide consistent and comparable standards, aligned to the , in English language arts, literacy and mathematics.
The goal is to have more rigorous tests measuring student progress toward college and career readiness and have common, comparable scores across different states.
Joseph Martineau, executive director of the Bureau of Assessment & Accountability for the Michigan Department of Education, said that the computer adaptive technology will be tailored to each student's individual ability and that question difficulty will increase or decrease depending on a correct answer.
"This will be a culture shift for students," Martineau said.
Eventually, it is the hope that the Smarter Balanced assessment will replace the need for students to take the ACT. However Martineau said Smarter Balanced "is going to have to demonstrate its ability to be a college predictor test" before colleges will accept those scores in the place of the ACT.
Meanwhile, as the state readies for the new exam, Martineau said districts will have to determine if they have sufficient student to computer ratios in order to make sure they are technologically capable of administering online assessments.
"That does not mean one to one computing," he said, adding: "Two hundred to one is probably not going to work."
MEAP/MME current assessments
Subject K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Mathm m m m m m
M
Reading
m m m m m m
M
Writing
m
m
M
Science
m
m
M
Soc. Studies
m
m
M
m = MEAP; M = MME
MEAP/MME and Smarter Balanced 2014-2015
Subject K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 MathS S S S S S S S S S Reading
S S S S S S S S S S Writing
S S S S S S S S S S Science
m
m
M
Soc. Studies
m
m
M
m = MEAP; M = MME; S = Smarter Balanced
For more information, visit www.smarterbalanced.org.
So now we will have a classroom of students not taking the same assessment test as their classmates. If the goal is a certain level of achievement than set a fixed proficientcy level and everyone at or above is good. This makes no sense at all when the public discussion is to use standardized testing as a measure. The ACT doesn't change the next question depending on your answer.
1) schools don't have enough working technology to make this happen hardware or infrastructure. 2) what are the error rates with the young ones reading and flipping between screens? 3) Adaptive Testing? Designed to make you fail. There was such an uproar when certification testing went this route. Not sure what came of it.. but designing a test with the desired outcome is only 50% correct? as the kids say wtf.... 4) Who designs this stuff and thinks it up? They certainly are not teachers and /or they haven't spent time in a long time in a classroom...
Why do you think it is a good idea?
I agree with you 100%! This is a debacle in the making. All schools being able to take the tests in a timely and efficient way to having enough staff who can supervise and manage students who know how to get around the system along with the need to have enough adequate technology will complicate this already stressful yearly event.. I know students who randomly blacken in any answer with the pencil approach. Now they will learn that they keep getting easier questions if they don't answer the first one correctly because the questions get harder if you answer them correctly. Let the teacher be the professional in the classroom again. Most teachers can tell how well each of the students is progressing. Remember the good old days?
Our overemphasis on metrics is killing actual "education".
http://www.smarterbalanced.org/
As a high school student myself, I completely agree. Each year, my district administers the NWEA, a similar test in that the questions increase in difficulty as you get more right. Currently, there is no incentive driving students to succeed on these kinds of tests. Also, I completely agree that there is an overemphasis on metrics in education. The over-testing of kids just increases the amount of apathy many students have toward school and "education".
I want the contract to lease the computers to the school.