Questions+and+Answers

 Bill
 * As the title suggest, I'll be posting questions here as I get them (about Core to College, the Smarter Balanced assessments, and/or the Common Core State Standards) and doing my best to provide a response based on my understanding at the time (I'll try to include a date, as some of these issues are moving targets!). Feel free to post your own questions or add your own responses in the form of comments--thanks!

I looked over the Smarter Balanced questions for Mathematics. They looked WASL-esque. (Can you give me the history about why the MSP and/or MAP had such a short shelf-life?) I think the short answer is that the Common Core State Standards came along and trumped what the state was doing on its own; I’ve also heard concerns about the relative lack of feedback from those assessments, plus the long lag time, which I understand the SB system will improve. But I’ll run these questions by my OSPI contacts and get their responses to you as well… My concerns: · I didn’t see any direct computation questions. It was all multiple-choice number-sense OR super challenging estimating. I did not see a question that asked students to multiply two multi-digit numbers. I did not see a question where students were asked to add two fractions with unlike denominators. There were questions where these skills //could// be used. But none where they were necessary…nor, none where they were the sole skill being assessed. Maybe the direct computation skills are intended to be tested in regular classroom settings, but if teachers know their students can score better on the test (that essentially assesses the teachers’ abilities) by estimating, then **that** is the skill that the teachers will emphasize. Short version of that bullet: The questions were either too easy/multiple guess by estimating OR too hard to get started. I’m not sure what you were “looking over”—the achievement level descriptors (ALDs), the [|sample items available on their web site], something else…?—but given they will be using the ALDs to develop the item pool and piloting items this spring, what’s available now as “Smarter Balanced” questions is a pretty limited subset of what will exist when the assessment system is fully operational. The other thing to remember is that from a higher education perspective we’ve been somewhat fixated on what’s on the 11th grade assessment; the Smarter Balanced assessment system will consist of classroom, interim and summative assessments in grades 3-8 and high school (grade 11), so it’s intended to be a cumulative system to reflect as much as possible the Common Core’s shift toward a more narrow focus on fewer standards in more depth across the grades (it’s worth looking at the actual standards if you haven’t had the chance, either through [|the Common Core site] or through [|the Illustrative Math site] developed by Bill McCallum from U. of Arizona and other co-authors of the standards. · Since these exams will be computer based, I would be concerned that the technology could be a barrier. On some of the questions I was asked to ‘show or explain my work.’ Showing and explaining math on a computer is AWFUL! We use pictures, diagrams, symbols…none of which works well in a text box on a screen with a mouse and a key pad…especially with a 4th grader’s dexterity. That’s definitely an ongoing concern across the Consortium; they’re spending a lot of money studying this issue, testing the existing technologies, and developing new approaches to it. (It’s very much a work in progress at this point, but the sample items they’ve posted give a little sense of the direction they’re headed—I’m not sure if these items are the ones you looked at and found wanting or not.) The technology capacities in this area are evolving rapidly, but I think it remains to be seen whether they’ll be successful in this area. ||