Benchmark Training Case Study

The North Carolina Pre-Kindergarten Program, formerly known as More at Four, is geared towards bettering the lives for At-Risk 4-year-old children. Exposing children to an early learning experience that will promote a positive learning environment to ensure Kindergarten readiness is what drives the program. Upon arrival, each child is screened using the Brigance 4-year-old tool to assess and determine the child’s developmental skills and abilities. According to the text, “Classroom tests and assessments play a central role in the evaluation of student learning. They provide relevant measures of many important learning outcomes and indirect evidence concerning others” (Miller, Linn, Gronlund, pg. 139). While many educators and families

Our goal of this training is to teach your dog that he gets something even better for ignoring the other item, which help to keep your dog safe from dangerous things on the ground.

The Response to Intervention framework is a critical element of the Westside Elementary to meet the individual instructional needs of our students. The school utilizes universal screenings to access all students reading data in grades one through five, three times throughout the school year. Primarily, two assessments, STAR and Aimsweb data, determine the pathway of the students and the services deemed appropriate, including teacher information and collaboration with the MTSS team. The students partake in the assessments three times a year; fall, winter, and spring. Tiers are not stagnant; students may receive services from multiple tiers, depending on instructional, academic, and environmental needs. Therefore,

Originally the Standard Based Assessment exam was used from 2012 to 2014 in order to evaluate the students’ proficiency on content-based material ( ). Just last year a new testing method, the Alaska Measures of Progress testing in the areas of mathematics, reading, and writing was adopted ( ). The shift from the Standard Base Assessment to the Alaska Measure of Progress was the Department of Education desire to have students prepared for secondary education or work placement expectations set for in the statement. The Alaska Measure of Progress exam are drastically different in questioning, scoring, achievement definitions, and score parameters then the preceding testing assessment ( ) This lack of comparison leaves the educators in a glitch as they try to educate their students in content-based material without having reliable proficiency testing results. As of this writing the educator will only have the snapshot of last year’s results to direct, guide, and implement their teaching strategies to facilitate the learning process in the classroom. However these test results scores are presently being debated in open forum to the public to set cutoff scores for the four categories in which the student will show proficiency ( ) . So without adequate guidance the teacher is hampered in their efforts to educate a diverse

If so, what main areas were included in the psychoeducational evaluation?” Although, the interviewees have different backgrounds, both have received psychoeducational testing reports. However, unbeknownst to the author, Jennifer, the special education teacher, only had experience receiving the reports versus administering the tests, since Allen ISD and other ISDs require a certified diagnostician to administer the psychoeducational testing. According to Jennifer, “I am not certified to give this type of assessment” (J. Hodge, personal communication, August 28, 2015). Nonetheless, Jennifer stated, “The main areas in the report included, 1) assessment techniques, 2) sociological information and review of records, 3) classroom observation, 4) teacher observation, 5) assessment findings, 6) Summary, 7) suggested recommendations, and 8) data and graphs from assessments” (J. Hodge, personal communication, August 28, 2015). Meanwhile, for Marisol, “psychoeducational testing became the starting point of her daughter’s life early on” (M. Puterbaugh, personal communication, August 29, 2015). Through the various assessments, it allowed Marisol to understand her daughter’s strengths and weaknesses in how she learns and develops, ultimately allowing educators and parents to offer her

The sub-standards for data evaluation 6(L) and 6(C) address educators understanding how to analyze testing data and make appropriate plans of action based on results for the student’s educational needs. The unit plan required me to build charts and comprehend data that was given in a chart. From evaluating created bar graphs with data I was able to analyze the material and comprehend what the child’s needs are. This allowed me to compare different groups of students and compare the results of select groups next to one another. As for guiding learners to be able to examine their own performances and peer performances with sub standards 6(F) and 6(M), the students will use peer assessment and self-assessment to evaluate their progress. The students will use questions providing in a rubric to help lead the students to assess one another. This will guide the students on setting their own goals by evaluating themselves and by helping

417). Portfolios collect samples throughout the year and show the progress the student has made over time. This is evidence that teachers can use to inform instruction, parents can use to support the students’ learning, and students can use to understand their own performance. Another assessment tool that can foster literacy growth and help make successful learners is a rubric. Cohen and Cowen (2011) define a rubric as “a scoring tool that lists the criteria for a piece of work and specifies how students’ work will be judged by using several levels of performance” (p 420). Furthermore, Cohen and Cowen (2011) proclaim that “the rubric provides the child, parent and teacher with objective criteria that can be mutually agreed on and set up at the start of a grading period” (p. 421). Cohen and Cowen maintain “a rubric can be used like a contract to which both child and parent can agree…because its purpose is to objectify the evaluation of the child’s completed project or products” (pp. 421-422). Therefore, the rubric form of assessment involves parents in the literacy development of

Sufficient instructional time should be allotted to allow students to receive immediate feedback and correct answers. Consequently, teachers should implement a formative assessment schedule based upon the work of Wisehart and Pashler to prepare students for summative unit assessments. Additionally, the instructional time allotted to prolonged SOL review blocks are to be parsed out over a six-month period using a 3-week interval to optimize retention and subsequently SOL

Evaluations can be stressful for even the most veteran teacher. Providing new teachers with coaching support can ease this stress and anxiety of being observed and evaluated. Part of the evaluation process is being able to provide feedback that promotes effective instruction. This is an area that JD Parker is strategic about. Effective instruction is critical to student achievement, it is the expectation of administration that effective instruction be delivered continually. Two literacy coaches and one S.T.E.M. coach plan, support, and assist teachers with this component.

The standardized training has many benefits, but also faces many challenges. The first challenge it faces is that some client advisor that have been hired have been in the business for many years and have bad habits that are not easily eliminated. The turnover rate of client advisor is also a challenge, after spending the resources of training an individual to perform at optimum levels, sometimes they chose to leave to another location for many reasons. Some of those reasons are not having the expected clientele and not meeting personal expectations. Client advisor also choose to leave due to travel times to expected dealership. The allowed training time is also a challenge because it must be short due to client advisor getting paid by commission

In 2011, the Pennsylvania Department of Education offered to school districts a new computer adapted test known as the Classroom Diagnostic Tools (CDT) (Pennsylvania Department of Education, n.d.). The CDT is an online, computer-adapted exam that is designed to measure both student strengths and their weaknesses in math, reading, and science so that instruction can be modified to support them (Pennsylvania Department of Education, n.d.). This exam is aligned with the PSSA and the Keystone eligible content (Pennsylvania Department of Education, n.d.). The intent of the CDT is to provide a snapshot on how students are progressing toward Pennsylvania assessment anchors (Data Recognition Corporation, n.d.). The Data Recognition Corporation (DRC) provides the link to the CDT through a web-based server. This server allows school personnel to establish test sessions for students and to read reports documenting student performance on the

patients received at least one of twenty-six useless tests and treatments.4 In 2010, the Institute of Medicine issued a report stating that waste accounted for 30% of health-care spending, or some seven hundred and fifty billion dollars a year, which was more than our nation’s entire budget for K-12 education.4 The report found that higher prices, administrative expenses, and fraud accounted for almost half of this waste; however bigger than any of those was the amount spent on unnecessary health-care services.4

Not only does there need to be more sources of professional development, but it needs to be education revolving around assessments and evaluation. The results also showed that teachers value learning over just the focus on grades, and that teachers tend to rely on feedback without grades on a daily basis to reinforce learning. Since formative assessments have been proven to be of great value in the classroom, teachers are looking for more ways to implement them into their instruction. This study shows that teachers are willing to implement such assessments but feel they need more guidance and practice in order to successfully implement them in their classrooms (Volante & Beckett, 2011).

One important strength is the sequence of testing along the unit. Throughout the diagnostic test, teacher can determine the student’s existing knowledge and design the lessons for the rest of the week. The formative comprehensive assessment on day 6 will make the teacher able to check for understanding, adjust the lesson, and provide immediate feedback to the students. Mid-unit formative assessment on day 11, will evaluate student’s knowledge related to the lesson, identifying strengths, weaknesses, and target areas that need to be reviewed. The summative assessment at the end of the unit, will evaluate cumulative learning, skill acquisition, and academic achievement. The results of each assessment, will make the teacher able to assist the students to accomplish the learning goals of the unit determined by the state-adapted standards

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