Trouble Shooting

Today we had a problem arise at a school in assigning assessments. I had the same problem when I tried to trouble shoot for them. What finally solved the problem was switching browsers. This shouldn't happen, of course, but in the course of companies changing browsers and systems, problems can arise. We can always try to solve the problems by first switching browsers. If it doesn't work on Safari or Explorer, does it work on Firefox? If it does work on that switch, we know that somehow things have changed with one of those browsers. If you have the opportunity to switch platforms, say from Windows to a Mac, does that change things? Does your problem exist on all of your computers using the same system, or does it work on one computer and not another? If you have tried what you can try on your own, you may have to contact your project leader for help. He/she may not have the answer, but he/she can direct you to someone who might be able to help you.

With all of the differences in how each school's networks can be set up, it is hard for anyone to know exactly what to do each time something comes up. Let us know, and we'll do our best to help you. The answer is frequently as simple as turning off your pop up blocker.

Year End Reports

There's a lot of the school year remaining, but it's still time to start thinking about next year. While you still have the data from this school year in your accounts, take a look at your assessments and run some of the reports that can tell you where your students have made progress and where they continue to struggle.

If you have been using Skills Iowa's benchmark assessments, you might want to run comparison reports using the Compare Assessments report. This report will allow you to compare selected assessments to see if your students have shown growth. With time left this year, there is still time to reteach some of the big concepts that have eluded your students.

The Overall Skills Performance report will show you the strong and weak spots for all of the assessments your students have taken in selected subjects over a selected period of time. Keep in mind that if some of your assessments were pretests, that those assessments will be included in this data.

Finally, if you want to zero in on individual students, you can run the Student Performance report, the last report in your list. This will allow you to select those assessments that you want to see in the same report and will allow you to select only those assessments you think should show mastery and give you the opportunity to not select the pretest assessments.

Assessment Center's reports are a valuable way for you to use data to drive your instruction. They are also a great way for you to make plans for the upcoming year.

The Quest for Quality

In their book, Multiple Measures, Stephen Chappuis, Jan Chappuis and Rich Stiggins put forth five keys to quality in assessments in the chapter The Quest for Quality.

1. Clear Purpose-Know why you are conducting the assessment; what do you want to learn from the assessment.

2. Clear Learning Targets-Know what you want to measure; do you want to see if students already have mastery of a skill or are you trying to make a decision of whether to do more instruction on a topic.

3. Sound Assessment Design-Make sure the type of assessment you are giving will measure what you want to know. Not every type of assessment results in the same type of information.

4. Effective Communication of Results-Is the assessor able to get the results of the assessment in time to make the instructional changes necessary, and can he/she share those results with students.

5. Student Involvement in the Assessment Process-Students need to see the results of their assessments as soon as possible and they need to be able to learn from their results with immediate reinforcement.

Skills Iowa's Assessment Center can help you with many of these aspects of your assessment program. All assessments are not created equal. If you cannot break down the results to determine which parts of the test caused your students problems and to find out where they found success, your assessment results in only a grade. Assessment Center's suite of reports allow you to know how a class or a student has done on a single assessment on each skill tested. You can also see how they have done over a series of assessments. Skills Iowa assessments give you the data to make instructional decisions.

Skills Iowa Implementation Meetings

If your school has not already had an implementation meeting to plan the use of Skills Iowa in the upcoming school year, you soon will. You have some great ideas that your fellow teachers and administrators should know. This is a great time to discuss how you have used Skills Iowa as well as to ask questions that you have about the programs we use in Skills Iowa.

If you have questions that can't be answered in your school, contact your project leader by clicking here. We at Skills Iowa are ready to help you find answers to your questions.

Your ideas are too good not to share. If you want to share them with those outside your building, please comment here on the Skills Iowa Blog. You will have to create an account before you can post, but you may already have an account.

We're looking forward to hearing from you, and your fellow teachers should hear from you as well.

Thanks for all you do.

Math Benchmark Assessment

You took the math benchmark assessments this year, but have you used the Compare Assessments report to see where there has been growth? This is a great report that shows you how your students have grown on the Essential Concepts and Skills. You can see the score of the entire assessment, the progress for individual classes as well as individual students and individual skills. This is the reason to take these assessments. If you need any help using this report, please contact your project leader.

Flash Player

There is a new version of Flash Player out, Version 10. You should not yet install this on your computers because it will cause problems with using Skills Tutor.

If you have already installed it, you will need to downgrade to Flash Player 9. Please consult your tech staff for help in doing this.

Don't wait

If you are wondering about a part of Skills Iowa that you haven't used, and are planning on using it next year, don't wait. Get started with it this year with a group of kids who you already know. This will help you get familiar with it for next year.

If you are using the benchmark assessments, but have not created and used your own assessments as well, try to create and use one over the concepts you are teaching right now. Your kids already know how to do their part, so why not reach out of your comfort zone just a little bit and start gathering more information about your students' achievement levels.

Some of our teachers use only one or other of the programs. While we are always happy to find usage of our programs, using one or the other of them in isolation will not lead to the same results as using both programs in conjunction. If you have not used Skills Tutor, and feel you need a little review, let your project leader know. Your project leader is going to be in your building soon for implementation meetings for the 2010-11 school year, and it would be easy to add a visit with you to the day.

Assess, Analyze, Act. This is our plan, and with the use of both of our programs, you can complete the process.