Adult and Community Learning Services

Your Program's FY 2003 Assessment Procedures

It was great to meet with most of you at the Regional Spring Forums. In order for our office and for SABES to plan for contracting and training, we need to get more information from each program about WHO and HOW the program will implement the new standardized assessment policies for the next fiscal year. After reading the following information, please read and submit the relevant attached form(s) for each site to Fabio Scarcelli by Wednesday, June 19th with the detailed information we need filled in. (See sample description of assessment process at end of memo).

As you complete the attached form(s), please keep the following in mind:

1. Each program must designate in advance which staff (teachers, counselors, …) will be administering each assessment instrument.
2. A teacher cannot administer or score primary assessments for her/his own students.
3. Designated staff must successfully complete an upcoming training before s/he can administer a primary assessment to students, even if you have been trained before on the test. In these trainings, we will focus on the importance of validity and reliability and how to achieve them in how the tests are administered.
4. It takes an estimated 30 to 50 minutes to administer a given subject area of the TABE to a group of students. It takes an estimated 2 to 3 minutes to score each test.
5. In order to have reliable testing scores for the BEST oral interview section statewide, we must achieve uniformity in our scoring across practitioners throughout the state. It will take some practice and require some 'refresher' work at the beginning, mid-point, and end-point assessments during the year. Hence, every staff member designated to administer the BEST must follow the following protocol:
   1. It takes an estimated 15 to 20 minutes to administer and score the BEST to an individual student.
   2. The first twenty (20) administrations of the BEST to students MUST be completed by two designated staff working together, i.e., by a pair of BEST administrators/scorers. After the first 20 administrations, these staff can administer and score the first annual round of BEST assessments on their own.
   3. The first ten (10) mid-year administrations of the BEST must be completed by two designated staff working together; subsequent mid-year BEST administrations can be done by these staff working on their own.
   4. The first ten (10) end-of-year administrations of the BEST must be completed by two designated staff working together; subsequent end-of-year BEST administrations can be done by these staff working on their own.
6. For the REEP writing test, EVERY writing sample MUST be scored by two trained scorers. A third "master scorer" is needed as a "tie breaker" when these two scores do not agree. It takes about 90 minutes for students to respond to a REEP writing prompt. It takes an estimated 10 minutes for an experienced scorer to score one student's written response/sample, and scorers can successfully score tests for about two hours at a time.

Following are the trainings we have scheduled to date on how to administer and score the new required assessments. We are in the process of scheduling additional trainings. Registration information will be forwarded soon.

As referenced in the May 11 memo, the following tests to measure educational gain in the primary area must be given to students in your program:

We are in the process of developing an assessment policy manual to help answer your questions about the new assessment policies and administration policies for the TABE, BEST, and REEP. We will send out the first section of the manual as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Note: A sample assessment process for administering the BEST might look like this. Students are assessed monthly for class placement by the counselor. Students are then given the initial BEST to measure educational gain within 3 weeks of placement by the counselor and/or an additional trained staff member. These tests will be scored as part of the administration. Students will be given these scores within a week. Results are entered in SMARTT monthly.