Special Edition - Assessment/Data

 I am providing a recap of some of yesterday's region meeting since I flew through this content. Feel free to share this link with your teams for further review. 

Data and Assessment Updates

This Assessment Calendar is maintained by our very own Ileana Gruia. I have it integrated into my calendar to keep up with all the windows and dates things are due. Ileana is your lifeline when it comes to MCAS and assessment windows! This is the link you use to add the assessment calendar to yours (you can click it on and off so as not to overwhelm your calendar view).

bostonpublicschools.org_4u1hhpneefmgds4kf7bn40huh0@group.calendar.google.com

This is what it looks like. You can view district calendar/events and the assessment calendar on the second tab next to "Home" of this blog.

In an effort to build our assessment and data muscles, school superintendents have been engaging in professional learning with ODA. Now that we are moving into assessing mid-year, we looked at assessment participation and achievement/growth.

A few notes: 

• We know there are questions about validity since these are given remotely
• This is one reason why getting better at analyzing student tasks may provide more timely information about student learning

Below, find information by school code:

• Assessment participation rates are as of 2/3/21
• Percentages are based on grade levels that were eligible 
• Highlighted cells indicate the school opting into the assessment

Since schools participated in MAP Fluency and Growth, I am highlighting the report in NWEA that maps students' achievement and growth.

• Log into NWEA site: https://sso.mapnwea.org/auth/login (Not single sign-on; you need a password)
• To see Quadrant Report - On left side go to View Reports > MAP Growth Reports > Achievement Status and Growth. You will be able to view both ELA and Math if two sessions have been administered. We want all children in the green

• To see Fluency Report Over Time - On left side go to MAP Reading Fluency > Choose your school > Choose terms you would like to see over time. Below this visual there will be additional data about oral reading rate, phonological awareness, phonics/word recognition, listening comprehension, picture vocabulary, and sentence reading fluency. 

What would it take for us as a district to give students the opportunity to have agency and ownership of their learning?

As we continue to analyze tasks, here is the "task" Amanda Gorman was given to write "The Hill We Climb" as reported by New York Times. 

Biden’s inaugural committee contacted Gorman late last month. [Gorman] wasn’t given any explicit guidelines about what to write, she said.

“They did not want to put up guardrails for me at all,” she said. “The theme for the inauguration in its entirety is ‘America United,’ so when I heard that was their vision, that made it very easy for me to say, great, that’s also what I wanted to write about in my poem, about America united, about a new chapter in our country.”

At the same time, Gorman felt the poem needed to acknowledge the dark chapter in American history we are living through.

“We have to confront these realities if we’re going to move forward, so that’s also an important touchstone of the poem,” she said. “There is space for grief and horror and hope and unity, and I also hope that there is a breath for joy in the poem, because I do think we have a lot to celebrate at this inauguration.” 

Gorman began the process, as she always does, with research. She took inspiration from the speeches of American leaders who tried to bring citizens together during times of intense division, including Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She also spoke to two of the previous inauguration poets, Blanco and Alexander.