NCSL Virtual Meetings, 29 Mar 2021

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From YouTube: Assessing Learning Gaps

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NCSL Virtual Meeting Series: Assessing Learning Gaps, March 29 2021

A

All right, thank you so much for joining us today. My name is michelle eckstrom and I'm the education group director at the national conference of state legislatures and today we're kicking off ncsl's virtual meeting series assessing learning gaps.

A

We know from our work in our education program at ncsl with state legislators and staff that this is a big topic of concern for all of you, lots of questions about what we know about how well students have been faring over the past year that we've had this disruption in education, wondering how much it's impacted their learning, um how much it's impacted their mental health and social emotional learning. So over this series of three meetings this week, we're going to be diving into this.

A

So today is the first meeting uh of of the week and we'll be specifically focusing on ways of assessing learning gaps and what we're finding from the research.

A

So just as a reminder, today's meeting is being recorded so um all so that we can share this and build our digital library that will be online along with resources from all of these wonderful organizations um so that you can go back and revisit it or you can share it with your colleagues, and we also know that many of your colleagues aren't able to join us because they're right in the middle of session. So we are recording this.

A

We will not record the q a though so you can feel free to ask those questions that um that you might not want the public to know about, um but um but we're going to record the content piece of this. We also wanted to remind you to please join by video. Have your camera on be fully present and add your full name into your title so that we know who's joining us.

A

We definitely would love for you to contribute to talk about the conversations you're having in your state or your state's perspective on these issues and to ask questions of our speakers.

A

um While the speakers are speaking, please be sure that your audio is muted, so that we don't have background noise and at any point you can go ahead and type. Your questions, your comments, any feedback like that in the chat box to the right side of your screen during the presentation, um because we do have open sharing rights for our speakers.

A

We would just ask that you not accidentally share your own screen under any circumstances and again just a reminder that the the meeting is recorded and will be posted online um for you for for future reference.

A

So just as a reminder of where we're sort of at with with this topic, um as we know, there are a lot of concerns from policy makers, educators, parents about whether or not students have fallen behind into what extent. We know that this probably varies from from student to student and also varies um likely from subject to subject and um is, is probably not consistent, but we do know that there are some trends that we're seeing that we're going to learn about today.

A

We also know that this impact isn't only on academics, but it's also on mental health and social, emotional learning and just all the ways that children are affected by not being in a traditional school setting as they normally would be. This time of year.

A

um There aren't um uh there were no summative assessments last year, so unfortunately we don't have the data for where students were at at the end of next last year, and this year um there are reduced assessments in many states. um States are going through the process of asking for waivers from the us department of education if they can either if they can reduce the number of assessments and so they're working through that process.

A

But we know that there's definitely interest there, but in some states they will be administering all of the annual statewide summative assessments.

A

We also know that, just as in typical school years, formative and interim assessments continued formative assessments are those assessments where teachers are testing students on what they're learning, after a chapter or a section of content, to get immediate feedback to the teacher on how well the students are doing and for the students to learn and get a sense of how well they're doing on content. And then there were those interim assessments still happening in many cases.

A

Those periodic assessments two or three times a year where students got again feedback on math or reading, and they could determine where they were at if they were still on grade level, if they were head of grade level or falling behind, and that information was also shared with the students as well. So we do have a sense of how well students are doing, even though those summative assessments weren't administered last year and may be reduced this year.

A

So with that framing, um I want to go ahead and jump into our conversation with our great assessment experts that we have joining us today. We have karen lewis who's a senior research scientist at nwea.

A

We have kristin huff who's vice president for assessment and research at curriculum associates, and we too have joining us carolyn wiley, who is a principal research, scientist and director of research at ets. So we welcome all of you. We thank you for joining us today and we are going to hop right into the conversation um today will be a conversation I'll be asking them. Questions and they'll be responding and then, as I mentioned, feel free to type your own questions into the chat box.

A

If you have, some of them will also give you time um as well at the end. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and I am going to have our speakers join us. So the very first question that we have for them is um the data that has been um that that has been discovered and the information that you all have been collecting and watching in the research that you've been doing on how well students are keeping up until now um have students falling behind by how much?

A

And how did you go about collecting this data? What kind of instruments um were available for schools to administer assessments and for you to collect this data? So first we're going to start with karen from nwea and she's going to share with us about the research that um that they did last spring and last fall.

B

Great, thank you. Michelle are my slides coming through okay, yes, great yeah, hi everybody, I'm so thrilled to be here with you and be able to talk about this important topic and share some of what we're finding um clearly, it's very central to my life, these days and my professional life, but also my personal life. I have a second grader here at home with me, who is just going back to the inside of a classroom next week for the first time in portland.

B

So I'm thinking about this a lot professionally and personally, I want to start by just saying a little bit about our assessment. I think that helps to get at the question of how did we assess whether there were any learning gaps and so I'll talk a little bit about the nwea map growth assessment? We have several assessment solutions, but the map growth is our kind of flagship product. It is one of those interim assessments that michelle mentioned and it's computer adaptive.

B

What that means in that it's an adaptive assessment is that it adjusts, based on a student's level of performance, so higher achieving students see harder items lower. Achieving students see less difficult items so that we can really hone in and know a kid's ability level at any given time so that teachers can really adjust instruction accordingly and meet kids, where they're at and provide them with the next right step.

B

In terms of academic content, our assessment is grade level independent, so we can capture kids that are above or below grade level and really meet them where they're at now, partners typically use our assessment multiple times throughout the year.

B

A typical pattern is to assess in fall winter and spring, so our data do help us answer some questions about where there are learning gaps, because we have data before the pandemic really hit in full force and then concede if there are trends over time and compare that to more typical years, given our longitudinal research database now, our assessment is used in 11 million k-12 students in public and private schools across the country and about 25 percent about a quarter of public school students.

B

Take the map growth assessment in the data I want to share with you today we're looking at results in math and reading from over four million students, and we focus on grades three through eight, so to assess learning gaps. We ask a couple of questions.

B

First, we wanted to know when students re-entered the classroom in fall of 2020, what are their achievement levels and how do those achievement levels compare to what we'd see in a more prior year, looking back to 2019, looking at same grade peers to assess whether kids are entering this fall and a different shape than they were last year?

B

We also look at changes over time because our assessment is used at multiple times throughout the year. We can look back to the winter of 2020. This is the period of time before the pandemic really hit in full force and schools were closed, forced to shut physically. We can look at how kids were performing before school shut down and then for those that tested with us. This fall. We can look to see if there's any evidence of learning gains over time.

B

I want to start by talking about this first question of have students fall in behind relative to a typical school year, so this looks at achievement percentiles based on our national norms, to understand how kids are performing we'll start by looking at what's happening in reading. So here I'm showing you achievement, percentiles broken out by grade for students back in fall of 2019..

B

If we place alongside those achievements for the prior more typical year here we're seeing in blue the results for these grades of students in fall of 2020 and in reading. What we're seeing here is that performance, this fall of 2020 is pretty similar to what we saw in a more typical school year. There are some small percentile differences grade four grade.

B

Five achievement is slightly lower, but we actually see the reverse is true in those upper grades and the percentile differences here are really minimal and that's all the more evident if you compare what's happening in reading with what we saw in math so again, here we're looking at back to fall of 2019 as a baseline in red and comparing students entering achievement. This fall in blue and in math. What we're seeing is that students are entering entering school.

B

This fall with math achievement, that's anywhere, depending on the grade between 5 and 10 percentile points lower than those academic peers in a prior year.

B

Now, as I mentioned in addition to looking at just how do kids this year, compared to what we see in a more typical prior year, we also looked at how the kids that we've tested with us multiple times whether they actually saw any evidence of learning gains over the pandemic period and specifically here we're focusing on that early phase of the pandemic, looking back to the winter of 2020 and then measuring those students again, this fall to see if there's any changes in their scores over time.

B

Now don't get too overwhelmed at these figures. I know it's a lot of information here, but we'll walk through this together. What I'm, showing you are distributions of those score changes over time. So, if you take that upper left panel, let's say grades three through four: that's telling us for a third grader last winter. What is the change in her score when she was tested this fall in reading and the blue distributions at the forefront of the figure those are for kids across the pandemics fan peeking behind in red?

B

We have a more baseline typical year, looking back to 2019, to give a sense of what kinds of learning gains we would expect in a more typical, more typical period, what we have plotted the vertical line at zero. That would be the case where we saw absolutely no gain winter. Scores are equal to fall.

B

Scores kids have not made any increases, so what we want to see here are distributions that are shifted to the right of that vertical line of zero evidence that kids are making some learning gains, and what this figure tells us is that, at least in reading, most kids are making learning gains. Those figures are both shifted to the right of that zero bar and the red, and the blue overlap pretty significantly so, kids are learning at rates that are pretty on par with a more typical year.

B

Contrast that with what we're seeing in math and now you'll notice that those distributions are not lying on top of one another nicely like in reading, learning gains in math have shifted downward and are not as strong as what we see in a more typical year. That's not to say, kids aren't making gains, and in most grades the majority of kids are showing some evidence of gains, but these aren't on par with a typical year and more kids are falling behind relative to their prior status.

B

I want to close what I think, what's a really important asterisk on these findings, and this involves some concerns, we're seeing in the kids that have gone missing from our assessment data.

B

So we looked at the kids that tested this fall and looked back to fall of 2019 to get a sense of who went missing from assessment data, this fall and what the characteristics of those students were, and what we found is that a larger proportion of kids that were not assessed this fall, but had obsessed with us in the past they were more likely to be ethnically and racially diverse.

B

Specifically, they were more likely to be black or hispanic, they were lower achieving in a prior year, and if we look at the schools they came from, they tended to be more concentrated in schools that serve a higher proportion of kids in poverty, so that these kids have disengaged with our tests and probably disengaged with school altogether is concerning in and of itself, but it also places a pretty big asterisk on the results that I have shared with you.

B

If we're missing this sizeable portion of kids that were most likely to be hard hit by the pandemic, we are probably also likely to be underestimating the impacts of covid19 on achievement and growth for students across the nation.

B

So I think, I'm probably at my time limit but just to wrap up and summarize what we found when we assess learning gaps is that when it comes to entering achievement, this fall reading looks on par with a more typical year, but math is where we're really seeing more impacts.

B

If we look at gains, students have made over time, we see, kids are making learning gains, but in math, specifically those are lower than what we'd expect in a typical year and that we have a concerning patterns of missingness in our sample means. At this point, we just have an uncomplete understanding of what's happening across the nation and we may actually be underestimating the impacts of coba 19..

B

I will stop sharing my screen at the moment.

A

That was great. Thank you so much for that insight. um It's really helpful to know um you know where the gaps are and that your research seems to show that it's math, um that's even more concerning and the students who were missing from the assessment is a really important piece of that as well.

A

So next we're going to hear from kristin huff from curriculum.

A

C

Great, thank you, I'm uh not yet sharing my screen, or am I yes? I am right great. Thank you. Thank you. So much um the I ready assessment. We serve um uh about 9 million students a year that goes up to 10 million. When you look at students, we serve with all of our curriculum uh as well. Much like uh karen described for the nwea map. We are administered three times a year. We are an adaptive assessment. Karen did a great job of describing that and we do have one difference in our assessment.

C

We talk about the results in terms of grade level uh placement, so we are able to identify whether a student is on grade level or above grade level or below grade level, and this uh the way we do. This is from really looking at how their skills and knowledge on the assessment compare to what college and career readiness standards mean by grade level proficiency.

C

So it is a it is a pretty high bar, that's comparable with what states expect in terms of student proficiency at each grade level.

C

I'd like to start by acknowledging that there's a lot of confusion out there and uh we see when we look at the headlines. Everything ranging from learning loss doesn't exist. Let's not talk about learning loss, let's not even test to there's a crisis, and we would like to um try to not contribute to this, uh and but some of our results do do differ from what you've just heard.

C

One of the reasons we think it's so hard to know exactly what's going on is because this year we are not comparing apples to apples and that's what we need to do in order to really understand the unfinished learning.

C

We think that when you look at the data, when you look at who is testing in school versus who is testing out of school, it matters. uh We need to understand how these students differ from a demographic perspective and from a performance perspective, and what our data has shown is that students who tested in school this school year are very different from the students who remain remote and because of the variety of remote learning experiences that are simply not comparable to the past.

C

We have chosen to only look at the data from in school in order to make inferences about unfinished learning. We know that this is an underestimate of the full problem. With regard to missing data, we saw very relatively modest increases in missing data. We speculate, we're not sure that that's because our assessment is directly tied to instruction and perhaps was viewed differently by schools and and families this year, but we still think everything I'm going to show.

C

You is an underestimate of the true unfinished learning, because we're only looking at data from in-school testing, which has the same level of integrity as data from the past.

C

So what you see here are grades one through eight and reading, and this is where we have results that differ from what um karen just shared. Here. We see in grades, one through eight, the percent of students this winter. This is data from this winter. um The percent of students who are performing at grade level has decreased across the board.

C

We see this most acutely in grades, one two and three, where students benefit most from direct instruction and phonics phonemic awareness and other foundational skills and reading. We speculate that this will have a profound impact in years to come, because we all know how critical it is to be proficient in reading by the end of grade three.

C

We see the same. um Excuse me. Here's math here are grades, one through eight, much like the data we just saw from uh karen. We see even more loss across the board uh in mathematics.

C

Again, this is um uh the percent of students who are performing at grade level uh this year compared to the past, and you see for all grades great gaps. The steepest gap is at grade four, what's happening in grade four. This is um fractions. This is proportional reasoning. These are the foundational skills that are uh that constitute algebraic readiness, so we're likely to see ramifications of this for years to come as well.

C

When you disaggregate these data reading on the left, math on the right uh by schools serving majority black majority latino, you see that as the diversity increases in the schools, the gaps are larger for both reading and math.

C

When you disaggregate by income the same devastating trend, the less affluent communities have larger gaps than the more affluent communities.

C

Now we have been talking so far about this percent of students who are performing at or above grade level, this winter compared to the past. Let's take uh just a second to look at the other end of the distribution.

C

Now I'm going to show you the percent of students performing two or more grade levels below this winter compared to the past. That means, if I'm sitting in a fifth grade, classroom I'm performing at a third grade level or below in reading. We see this increase in almost every grade.

C

That means historically in grade three, there would be about 16 of students nationwide performing at a first grade level or below in winter of grade 3.. This is now at 22. That is not a trivial increase. I can tell you that um we see the same uh disturbing trend in mathematics across the board. The percent of students this winter performing two or more grade levels below the grade they're sitting in has increased across the board.

C

Again, when you disaggregate this by the diversity of the school, you see that schools with serving majority black and majority latino, are faring much worse than their counterparts in schools, serving majority white and the same disturbing trend according to community income uh to wrap up. um We believe that, and one of the read ahead materials that uh I shared with michelle, I hope she shares out. It does share out some success stories from schools from last spring and we saw many trends.

C

We need to make sure that they are using assessments that deliver clear and instructionally actionable data that they have high quality, rigorous curriculum, that they focus on acceleration, not remediation, and they prioritize coherence with the rest of their uh instructional program. We know that there are uh half a half a million tutoring programs out there that are being offered. We need to make sure there's coherence with the main instructional program and um we need to engage students with culturally and linguistic, responsive, curriculum and assessments.

C

I think dan johnson's having fun with my screen, so I'll go ahead and stop sharing and- uh and we can continue with the conversation.

A

Thank you so much it's again. It's just it's! It's really important that we know when we see this data and we have a sense of how things are trending um and understand the extent to which we need to really focus on this going forward.

A

um So now we're gonna have um carolyn wiley join us from ets and she's gonna talk about what she's, seeing and she's. Also gonna talk a bit about the work that ets has been doing generally with states around these decisions that they have to make around um the assessments that they need to give so carolyn uh the floor is yours,.

D

Sure- and I just wanted to check michelle before I start, do you want me to respond to both those questions at the same time or you want me to okay, I can do that.

A

Yeah, you can go ahead and respond to both.

D

Sure I will do that then. So let me just share my screen so again, like the others. I'm delighted to have this opportunity to talk with folks, um so I am in the research division at ets, and so I don't have um data to present, like colleagues from nwea and curriculum associates about the specifics of learning gaps.

D

But I did just pull together a few things that I think are also helpful, that uh our data that present um some contextual information that perhaps starts to explain why we're seeing the kinds of results that we're seeing and that also will then affect how we think about moving forward.

D

So one of the the pieces of information that certainly got talked about a lot in march and still continues to be, an issue is just the technology gap, and so we saw early reports coming out from ed week um back this time last year. Talking about the the degree of technology challenges and how that varied uh across districts, whether higher income or low-income districts um and in some ways, I think it felt like a lot of these.

D

Were these challenges were getting resolved through the late spring and early summer of this year or of last year? But in fact, just looking at data coming out that ed week published last week from common sense, they reported that there had been 15 million school children with insufficient internet access at the start of the pandemic and that two to five million of those students are now connected, um which is a huge step forward. It also leaves 10 million school children still within insufficient internet access, which is a huge huge gap.

D

Another data source that I think is going to be useful as we're moving forward are the monthly school survey data that will be coming out from nip and we're starting to get non-national and some state-level insights into remote versus hybrid versus in-school opportunities for students where they are. The attendance data are still not there and I think that's going to be really telling, as we start to see those data in particular coming in, but I think these help really contextualize how varied the situation is across the country and so on. Average.

D

I think 21 or 25 percent of students are in fully remote situations in new jersey, where I am 51 of students are in fully remote situations for the months um that these first rounds of data were collected. But when you look at it by by students, race and ethnicity, african american students in new jersey, 71 percent are in remote settings and students uh who are economically disadvantaged or something similar around above 70.

D

So the the variation is really huge, still um in spite of uh more and more students starting to return to school, and I think another source of data that we need to not neglect is just conversations with teachers to really understand what's happening out in the field, so not a coveted, related survey, but just accidentally for another project. I've been talking to teachers and doing interviews in the last two weeks, not asking them about their covert experiences, but actually talking to them about lesson planning and what they were doing and the resources they were using.

D

But what was most um obvious from those conversations is the amount of work that teachers are having to do where they are planning lessons in either duplicate or triplicate, because they have their lesson for the kids that are right in front of them.

D

They have a variation of that lesson, for the students who are perhaps joining live, but are remote, and they have a third variation of a lesson for students that are fully remote because the ways in which they can interact with those students are very different, and so I think, as we think about all the supports and help that students need moving forward for next year.

D

I think it's really important that we always also remember that teachers need support as they are moving forward, because we've asked them for a full year to take on an incredible workload.

D

Part of the question that michelle had asked me to respond to was just an update on summative assessments that are scheduled this spring. So ets does do um the summative assessment in texas in california, and I reached out to my colleagues there just so that I could respond to this question, um and so we are seeing um both of these states are moving forward with much of their assessment plans around summative assessment.

D

They are looking for ways to accommodate both remote and in-person testing, they're, making um significant changes to the testing windows to accommodate what schools and districts need to do under being flexible and also, in some cases, shortening the blueprints for some of those assessments and removing the accountability requirements.

D

I'm using these as data sources to inform next steps, rather than part of the accountability system. But the other part of the question that I was asked to respond to was: if assessments are reduced. Does this impact our ability to determine if students are behind and so given the work that I do, which is primarily centered around formative, assessments and classroom assessment and teacher professional learning?

D

I actually went ahead and I reframed this question a little bit and I said how do we help teachers support student learning in the years after this one plus year of interrupted schooling, and what data will help them, since I think from what we've seen already while we're seeing some variations in data depending on the assessments used, it's clear that there are gaps and that students are behind they've had this interrupted schooling.

D

So we have a lot of data already. That tells us um much of what we need to know about the impact on student learning and that it's highly variable.

D

But um what we really need to be able to do is help teach schools and teachers identify not so much, or at least not just learning gaps or where the interrupted schooling has been, but also to document the teaching gaps so teachers this year and from last year as well, they are the ones who know very clearly what content did not get addressed or will not get addressed in this school year and what are the con?

D

The aspects of their curriculum that they know just from the discussions with students that they didn't cover it in sufficient depth and so documenting those teaching gaps and being able to transfer that knowledge to next year's teachers is part of what will be, I think, most helpful um moving forward and then thinking about classroom-based assessment and the teacher reports will be often sufficient to answer the questions at the local level of how do we help address students interrupted schooling, given the kinds of information that we already, that the local teachers will have and then pulling into that information.

D

Other local information that will be also really critical so which students had technology access and which, who did not um for how much of last year and which are the students or who are the students who disappeared last year and that'll again be really important to communicate that moving forward to the receiving teachers and that that information is what teachers can use for their initial curriculum and instructional planning for the next school year. That alone is not sufficient, but we also need to then help teachers.

D

Think about how to engage students in learning in next school year. As kristen already said, students will not benefit from just having an intense remediation period at the start of the year to fix these learning losses.

D

But in fact each new unit of instruction is going to need to be started by identifying what do students currently know and understand and are able to do, and then how does this particular unit build off where they are already?

D

Some of that information might come from pre-assessments. It could come from a more formal assessment or a quiz, but there's also lots of ways that teachers can engage in really critical informal explorations of what students know and can do in order to use that to move learning forward, whether they have students develop concept charts to to just brainstorm what it is that they know do sort of letter matches against the letters of the alphabet. What are the things that I know that start with a related to this particular topic?

D

No want learn, charts are commonly used or having students engage in think pair share to share what it is that they remember from before, and to connect their ideas from both what they've learned in school to their outside experiences and things that they learned in this last year, because while there might be gaps in formal learning and we're seeing that in these assessments, students we're learning lots of things that may not get captured in these kinds of assessments.

D

And so then, finally, how do we help teachers support learning next year? So you know we wish that we could give teachers more time and we all wish we had more hours in the day and given the amount of planning that they're doing currently a gift of time would be amazing.

D

We can't do that in a literal sense, but I think, as we think about what state legislatures can do, there needs to be mechanisms for funneling supports from states to districts and to schools that need it most so, which are our schools that suffered the greatest technology gaps, had the most remote students and had the most absences on. How do we get the additional resources that those schools need in order to give teachers time, and we can give teachers time in a couple of different ways?

D

We can pay teachers for targeted summer professional learning, around formative, assessment and pre-assessment.

D

We can also reduce class sizes or reduce the number of classes that teachers teach in order to provide them with more planning timing, time planning time and preferably joint planning time with teachers.

D

We can also provide additional coaches to school, or we can provide funding for additional coaches into schools to help teachers revise curriculum units based on local needs, and finally, we can use provide additional paraprofessionals to free teachers up from some of the aspects of instruction or other work that happens in schools that teachers get pulled into, but in fact they could be relieved of for a year in order to have more planning time in order to build and develop and make sense of the kinds of classroom-based formative assessment that I think, will be really critical that teachers need in the next year and years that follow to do that unit by unit analysis of where students are and how do we move learning forward from there.

D

A

Thank you so much so that definitely teases um our next conversation that we're gonna have, with um with our our other two experts, kristen and karen about uh the assessments or the tools that are available for us to use next spring or I'm sorry. Next fall either late, this spring or next fall, so that we can get a really good snapshot of where students are at what what are those tools that are available to um to students. So, let's start with karen.

B

I actually have a colleague on the line peyton rodriguez, if she's with us, who might be better positioned to speak to that than I am sure, welcome.

E

Pete yeah hi welcome. Thank you very much um yeah, so we do have um several different assessments that districts can purchase that and they do across the country um that we think can help identify where kids are and and and where what they're ready to learn. Next, so we have our math growth assessment, um and that is what karen talked about earlier, where we pulled our data from our studies, which is k-12 interim assessment designed to be given multiple times per year.

E

um Computer adaptive and again karen got into some of this earlier reading: english language, arts, mathematics and science. We really think that's a great tool for districts to use to help identify where kids are and help inform instruction.

E

We would highly encourage professional learning to go along with assessments. um You know, as our organization does not believe, the assessments in and of themselves will have an impact.

E

So it's really important that you provide the support and services for teachers to help them understand what the data is telling them, how to use it, how to inform instruction and come up with some ideas for what they can do to make an impact on student performance.

E

We do have a couple of other personal learning options that are available and we know different states are coming up with some different ideas, and you talked earlier about this before the call started about what states can do for funding. But there are some states that are coming up with some creative ways to use some of the federal funds that are being distributed.

E

So even though most of those funds are going directly to seas, there are some buckets.

E

If you will, that states are pulling from to provide additional supports around identifying where kids are in the fall in the spring and summer and fall and then also some professional learning for for teachers in to help them understand how to use the data and use the assessments properly.

E

So we are happy to talk more about that and provide more information. But in a nutshell, that's what we have to offer.

A

Thank you. Let's hear.

C

From kristin great thank you um yeah, I think um you know we have our.

C

I ready suite of assessments, which are our districts are very familiar with, but I think just broadly speaking, um you know I would like every person in districts or states who are thinking about assessments to start off with asking a question: uh how is this assessment most immediately helpful for teachers to help students and really deeply understand the answer to that question and, in all possible instances prioritize those assessments that are going to help teachers help students uh I'd like to pick up on something caroline said.

C

One of the uh features we offer with the I ready assessment is a this notion of a prerequisite report so that the diagnostic assessment will allow educators to understand where the student streets, strengths and weaknesses are and um or unfinished learning. If you want to think about it in terms of um curricular gaps, and then we have these maps that say hey for this unit or lesson uh topic here are not every single thing that the student could learn in order to be prepared for this uh lesson.

C

But here are the critical pieces of information that will allow the student to have access to the grade level material, because what we know is that even having access to the grade level material is better for students in the long run. So really uh focusing that question on what are the prerequisites critical for on grade level? Success?

C

What are the prerequisites for caroline versus karen, and how do I quickly and seamlessly access uh resources that help help me scaffold for caroline versus scaffold for karen, and then you know the the last thing I would say, because there's been a a lot of um chatter out there about state, summative and states are um really grappling with these questions about about summative. It's um uh just.

C

You know one of the things that our educators love so much about. Our assessment is that it is not a summative assessment. It is not used for accountability for purposes. It is simply a tool that they have in their toolbox to help their students um access grade level material, and so I would just caution uh us to remember that today's discussion has been about uh interim assessments and for for our assessment, it's really designed to focus on instruction, which is what I believe students need most right now,.

A

And mute myself, thank you so much. um I have a question for both of you. Can you remind everybody what level what grade levels um your assessments are available for.

B

App growth is available for k-12.

E

A

Thank you. This is really helpful because sometimes, I think folks um do think of like grades three through eight because of the summative assessments. They picture that some of those interim assessments only happen in those grade levels too. So it's really helpful to know that this is available across the the grade span, so that we can get a really good understanding of where all students are at, especially those those young ones who, as you were, noting, may have struggled the most with with reading this particular in this particular situation.

A

um I have typed a question in the chat box for our participants um on the topic of summative assessments. um What we're just really curious in general, as a staff, because we're tracking um a bit at least in our heads, what the various states are doing around summative assessments? Will you be offering um summative assessments to all students this year?

A

Has your state sought a waiver from the u.s department of education it? If so, um how are they? um Thinking of potentially modifying the summative assessments that they're begin? They will be giving um and again those are for accountability purposes, um while you're doing that. I have another question for the speaker: did somebody admit themselves want to hop in okay, um while those the participants are answering that question in the chat box?

A

um I have another question for our speakers and I would also encourage our participants to be thinking of any questions that you have for our speakers as well.

A

um So we've been talking a lot about reading and math um in particular today what assessments are available or how can you tell us or or what is the conversation around um assessing social emotional learning and where students are at with social emotional learning, and are your organizations involved in that effort?

A

um Karen, do you want to go first.

B

Sure I don't have a lot to offer. Our organization does not offer an assessment of this type, but my area of expertise is social, emotional, learning and school culture and climate. So I think about this quite a lot. I think kristin's point was really critical, that before we even start to dip our toe in collecting data, we need to be really clear for what purpose and a lot of the social emotional learning assessments that exist are often used for evaluation purposes.

B

For instance, we want to implement an sel training curriculum and we want to know if it was effective. I think in this particular moment we need to kind of reframe our thinking from social, emotional learning to social, emotional, health or well-being, so that we can really understand the impact of the pandemic on kids, social and emotional well-being and know how best to support them.

B

So I think it really changes the kinds of questions we're asking potentially changes the assessments, because the data will do us no good if they are not actionable and they do not provide some kind of lever for schools and teachers to use to support kids. So we need to think really critically about what what is within the sphere of influence of schools and teachers and make sure we're getting them that information and not collecting a survey.

B

Just for the sake of we know, social emotional learning is important right now, so let's measure it, but let's be really careful about making sure it's actionable.

A

Great kristen did you want to add yeah.

C

I um I I fully uh support the notion of um thinking about the purpose and action actionable use of assessment before administering it. One thing that I'll mention is that um you know family this in my mind, sel the measures um can tell you something, uh but I think this is really where school community family partnerships really come into play when we did um our initial analysis last spring and we identified hundreds of schools that had actually defied the odds and kept learning constant during the chaos of last spring and we interviewed them.

C

One theme that arose that rose um clearly was the level of um not just the frequency but the depth of communication between the schools and the families, and I I think that when it comes to really getting a handle on sel for for students and individuals, that would be actionable and useful.

C

uh We're going to have to rely on that communication between the school and the family, which you know putting yet one more thing on teachers plates um you know, uh hurts my heart, because I know that they're doing the best that they can and they're already over stretched, but I'm I'm just um I I just have so much faith in those uh schools and those relationships between the educators and the families to really get the information we need about how students are doing.

A

Carolyn, did you have anything that you wanted to add.

D

Yeah, I think it is a place for really getting some guidance out to teachers to support their learning around this topic of what does it mean and how what are best ways for checking in with students, seeing how they're doing seeing what they're struggling with and recognizing that there will be anxieties and struggles that will continue through the next year or more that it's I'm with kristin.

D

It's not necessarily about having an assessment of that, but it's really giving teachers that professional learning opportunity that they know how it is that they have to tackle these very real issues that they will see manifest in their classroom. They probably need some support to know how it may be manifest, and then what are the kinds of supports that they can bring to bear from their school.

A

um I have another question about the types of supports you mentioned a number of times. The types of supports that you think teachers will need both.

A

Using the data to truly understand the supports that they'll need from leadership within their schools, additional training, they might need caroline. I know you mentioned additional support through eas or others who can also help them really focus in the classrooms.

A

I'd love to know what your organizations might be doing around any of that ongoing professional development or support for teachers. um Let's start with kristin this time.

C

Sure, thank you well, uh there's prob. This could probably be its own webinar right and so I'll. Just I'll just focus on one thing: that's been top of mind uh for us recently.

C

Many things have been, but one that comes to mind is that um I'll go back to these tutoring programs, which I think have hold a great deal of promise for um helping us accelerate uh student learning and these uh in these uh critical times, and I think that one area of support that is needed and it would not be just at the teacher level but the systemic level at the building, as well as the district, is finding that tutoring program that actually makes sense and works with the curricular supports you already have in place and that you're already using, because I I can't stress enough that tutoring programs, which hold so much promise for acceleration uh without that coherence without making sure you have the right logistics in place, as well as the right curricular match in place, uh are not going to live up to their promise.

C

So I think that's one area that we need to get supports in place asap because a lot of those are being employed for summer school, which is just around the corner.

A

Karen or caroline did either one of you have anything you wanted to add.

D

I can just one thing: I'll mention is that ets is part of ets. We have the institute for student achievement and that's a group of folks that work primarily with high school and middle school schools and supporting them in a variety of ways and through that they they have professional development for teachers that focus in on social and emotional, social, emotional and academic development.

D

They call that seed and there are some webinars that are freely available for teachers that they can participate in and they really focus in on strategies that teachers can use that support the development of non-cognitive skills as part of instruction, as opposed to separate from it. So they're really integrating that into their learning.

D

And I think that's a really important piece of it and again, I think any professional development that teachers can get around formative assessment and really understanding how to engage students in thinking about their own thinking, reflecting on what they've learned and providing evidence that teachers can use in the moment that day-to-day formative assessment. I think that is going to be of critical value for teachers in the next year, and so there's there's work that we've been doing at ets, around assessment literacy for teachers, I'm particularly targeting formative assessment pre-assessment as well.

A

Karen did you have anything you wanted to add.

B

Just one thought when we talked about the social, emotional well-being of students, but I think we also need to acknowledge that this year has been so taxing and traumatic for teachers as well. I worry we are going to be facing a tsunami of people leaving the profession because it's just been too much, so I think we need to just put our money where our mouth is and make sure teachers are being supported and that we can help them heal from this really really challenging year.

A

Thank you. um We have a comment and then a question. We have a comment from zachary robbins from virginia and he said that this year they passed house bill 2027 in senate bill 1357, which will transition grades three through eight reading and math assessments to a growth assessment model um they'll be using esser state funds, uh sr state set-aside funds to implement the first phase beginning this fall.

A

So thank you for sharing that um the we have a question that comes from liz in new jersey and how is the assessment data, particularly the interim assessment data being shared with parents? How can states encourage or mandate the sharing of information we had surveys in new jersey where parents, especially those non-english speaking, are not getting information about how other students are doing? I can attest to that.

A

Our kiddos are our school district uses iready and I didn't get any. I ready assessment results at all this year, which was frustrating to me too. So I'd love to know the answer. If they're, if your organization is encouraging that information to be shared with.

C

Parents absolutely uh now more than ever right, but this should have been true before now, right and so uh and to the question in the chat um making sure that reports are translated into the most common languages and that we as organizations are doing everything. We can to make sure that the sharing of information is as seamless uh as possible from a from a digital portal perspective.

A

B

I would also add it: we have created a tool not just to help family to kind of augment the family report, that we encourage our schools to share with families about how their students doing, but we've also created an open source goal tool to help families really conceptualize. That interim data like ours is descriptive. It's not prescriptive, so it doesn't meeting the kind of the national median is not indicative of whether a kid is going to be meeting the benchmarks for that grade at the end of the year.

B

So we have created an ex kind of a goal explorer tool to help. Parents and families understand if my kid grows at the kind of average level that we would expect, where does that, put them in terms of being on track to meet proficiency benchmarks on their end of the year summative assessment? Where does that put them in terms of being on track for college readiness, so that parents and families can really be thinking beyond just?

B

How did my kid perform this term to looking at kind of growth over time and how that sets them up to be where they want to be.

A

Carolyn, did you have anything you wanted to add on that question.

D

A

um It reminds me of something that we heard um during a conversation with a a british um colombian expert um on education. We've been studying with our international education study group at ncsl, the highest performing jurisdictions, and so one of them that we've been diving deeply into is british columbia, and um he had talked about how their approach to assessments is not for accountability.

A

Necessarily, it's definitely for to inform student or teachers, but probably most importantly, students, that the assessment literacy is part of what they build in from the very beginning in education there so that students can begin to use their outcomes on assessments as their own personal way to gauge how well they're doing- and that is- was something that legislators really stuck with that really stuck with them.

A

That really illustrated kind of the backward way that we think about things, perhaps here and how it's very different from the way that they think of things and these instruments in other countries that students should be able to um learn and sense for themselves how well they're doing, and then they could verify that or figure out if their.

A

You know, if their sense of how well they're doing it, was spot on or off track by the assessments that they take and that it becomes a student responsibility to um to to internalize that assessment information and learn what they need to do. So that was really interesting.

D

Yeah, that's great. That really starts with that's got to start with the classroom, formative assessment. We can't expect students to begin internalizing what they're doing when it's only being asked of them with respect to state summative assessments that has to start with. How am I doing in this lesson? How am I doing in this unit and the teachers need real support to put the kinds of structures in place that support student metacognition, that that is, it's not easy to do and it takes it takes time and effort.

D

But we see that in many of the in the schools that in some ways I would say in schools that have resilient students. They've they've put those skills in place already for students.

A

Well, we are at times so thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate all the expertise that you shared with us again. This will be recorded and disseminated widely to legislators and legislative staff and will be part of our digital library that we're building as a resource for state legislators on these pressing topics. So thank you for joining us today.