REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Teaching and Learning Report

To: Michael Green

From: Asha Riley

Date: May 17, 2017

Re: Teaching and Learning

State Assessments:

Schools have begun administering the state assessments. Thus far, the technical administration of the online assessments has gone very smoothly. We are grateful to Steve Rippl and his technology team for their support.

Appealing an Assessment Score Required for High School Graduation:

We have seven seniors that are projected to not graduate based on their Biology End of Course exam results.  Each has taken the test multiple times and the counselors and school staff have been working to support them. These seniors have passed all other graduation requirements and find this news very discouraging.

In three cases, they missed the passing score by just a few points. In these instances, we have an opportunity to request an appeal and have the test re-scored to verify its accuracy. The guidelines explain that an appeal is only appropriate when an appellant believes a student’s score did not meet standard because of a scoring error (such as incorrect labeling, answer book mistakes, erasure, miscalculation, lightly marked bubbles, or scoring errors on open-ended items). The process for the appeal is as follows:

1. Parents of the student sign a formal Notice of Score Appeal and send it to the state. I have coordinated this with the parents of each of the three students and sent them to the state.

1. The state has up to 60 days to retrieve the original test booklet and ship it to us at the district office. The time it actually takes to get the booklets back from the state varies. Some years I have received them rather quickly, in other years it took a while. The time it takes for them to retrieve the book is often impacted by the number of requests the state receives statewide.

1. Once we receive the copy of the original test, I set up an appointment with the parent, a Biology teacher, and myself. Together we review the student responses and identify opportunities the students could have received a higher score. The biology teacher assists in helping us articulate why we think the student should receive more points based on the evidence presented by the student in the test booklet.
2. We then ship the test booklet back to the state to have the particular items re-scored. This again can take up to 60 days. Typically it is completed fairly quickly.

Because the process can be time-consuming, and the result of the re-scoring are can’t be guaranteed to produce a passing score, we encourage students to retake the test with their peers in May.  Whether the re-scoring process is successful or they pass this final opportunity in May, I do not believe we will have results in time for the students to walk at graduation.  As you can imagine, this is very disappointing for the students and their parents.