Standardized Testing....A glimpse!
Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to work with my mentor as she prepared to administer the Georgia Milestones reassessment for level one eight grade students. She thought that it would be a good experience for me to get a glimpse at testing preparations on a "smaller scale". She has been the testing coordinator at our school for a very long time, and she made it look easy. Although, I knew that preparing teachers and over 800 students for the Georgia Milestone's was a daunting task. Testing was particularly cumbersome before the implementation of 1 to 1 devices - unloading loads of test booklets and answer documents, organizing and sorting them by codes, then reloading them to ship back out to the state. Luckily we did not have to do this, however, I was eager to see what testing preparations was all about.
Of the four schools in the county, we were one of two that conducted summer school for all 8th graders in the county that score level 1 in ELA and math. This meant that we had to prepare testing for students that were normally from other schools. Our tasks included sorting the test tickets, identifying students that required accommodations, then resorting them according to the testing administrator. The latter of which was most tedious. This included looking in the database to identify students that needed accommodations, such as extra time and read aloud. We also had to complete a testing schedule that would include the max times for all students.
It was very insightful to get first-hand experience at standardized test preparations, albeit on a small scale. I look forward to seeing this process during normal testing preparations next spring.
Of the four schools in the county, we were one of two that conducted summer school for all 8th graders in the county that score level 1 in ELA and math. This meant that we had to prepare testing for students that were normally from other schools. Our tasks included sorting the test tickets, identifying students that required accommodations, then resorting them according to the testing administrator. The latter of which was most tedious. This included looking in the database to identify students that needed accommodations, such as extra time and read aloud. We also had to complete a testing schedule that would include the max times for all students.
It was very insightful to get first-hand experience at standardized test preparations, albeit on a small scale. I look forward to seeing this process during normal testing preparations next spring.
Antonio,
ReplyDeleteAs a special educator I can relate to the daunting task of ensuring testing accommodations are met accurately. Our school has a special education population of 21%, with the majority of those students receiving some sort of accommodation. Our problem is trying to find enough staff to administer our small group testing as well as one-on-one testing. At times our small groups contain up to 12 children.
I find it interesting that your school administered the test on-line. We administered our Milestone Assessment paper-pencil and the staff seemed to prefer it. Our benchmark tests and common assessments created by Georgia State University are all administered on line which makes it difficult for us because we are not a one-to-one device school. What typically happens is our small group testing runs all day which translates into special education and ELL teachers testing instead of being in classrooms. If we were a one-to-one device school I can see the advantage but without access to that technology, it is a struggle for us.
This is a great experience!
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