Curriculum
Benchmark & Assessment
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In light of No Child Left Behind and the Arkansas Comprehensive Testing,
Assessment, and Accountability Program, many have expressed a concern over the amount of testing that students complete. Assessments have different purposes and should be used appropriately. The data obtained from the collection of assessments provides an in depth look at each student’s specific academic needs.
We give three different types of assessments—diagnostic, formative, and
summative. The diagnostic assessments are given at the beginning of the year to determine specific student needs. These assessments provide valuable data for teachers to place and guide students in our curricular materials.
Formative assessments check student progress towards meeting curricular goals at specified intervals. The data provides teachers with timely, effective feedback so they can modify instructional practices and/or interventions to help the student in meeting his or her goals. Summative assessments are the
benchmark or end-of-course assessments. The data from these tests are used to determine a school’s performance towards meeting the expected student performance goals each school year as defined by the state.
Fayetteville teachers and administrators are armed with a variety of data that allows them to develop and modify the curriculum and instructional practices to allow each student to make or to exceed his/her expected growth.
As part of the Arkansas Comprehensive Testing, Assessment, and Accountability (ACTAAP) plan, students in grades K-12 complete a norm-referenced test or criterion-referenced test each year. The current norm-referenced assessment used in Arkansas is the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). Student scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills are compared to a national group of students with the average being noted by the 50th percentile.
The criterion-referenced tests used in Arkansas are the Benchmark Assessments at grades 3 through 8 and 11th in literacy along with the end-of-course assessments in Algebra and Geometry. The student scores on these assessments are compared to an expected level of performance towards meeting the specific grade-level or course curriculum frameworks.
Fayetteville teachers and administrators use these data to determine the appropriate curricular materials and teaching strategies that would be most beneficial for individual students as well as groups of students. Through the use of Academic Improvement Plans (AIP) and/or Intensive Reading Interventions (IRI) teachers develop very specific plans to address the needs of each student that has not yet demonstrated proficiency on one of the state assessments.
The Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Accountability team uses the data to support teachers through targeted professional development as well as effective, standards-based curricular materials. For example, through the analysis of the data, teachers and administrators discovered a need to improve students’ spelling and reading performance. With these data, the team began to explore programs and or strategies that would help address spelling and reading. The district adopted a phonics-based program in grades K-1 and a spelling program in grades 2-5 to address these issues. In the short time that the programs have been implemented, student performance in the deficit areas seems to be improving.