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Friday, March 29, 2024
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VIDE Gearing Up for Transition to Online Assessments

Education will be changing from traditional paper testing to online assessments and is reaching out to the public and parents for their support. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) will eventually replace the old VITAL-S with more modern and interactive exams, according to a press release issued on Wednesday by the V.I. Department of Education (VIDE).
The new assessments are aligned to the Common Core State Standards, which VIDE adopted in 2010 and continues to be integrated into the public school curriculum. The adoption of the standards in English language arts and math set high performance and knowledge goals for students, while also pushing the bar higher for teachers, whose lesson plans and instruction now have to be more streamlined and tailored to the subject matter, and parents, who can now have more of an understanding of what the students are expected to learn at their grade levels.
The standards offer a clear progression of skills throughout the grade levels, along with opportunities to review in order to keep student skills’ sharp. The accompanying switch to a new online system aligned to the Common Core will not only allow students to be better prepared for college and the workforce, but will give schools and parents more timely feedback about student performance, which will ultimately allow VIDE to track student progress from elementary to high school. At the same time the tests will become more interactive and accessible, boosting student engagement overall.
While the official transition will not happen until March of 2015, Education officials are gearing up for a field test in May that will help identify what else needs to be done to make sure all schools and students are prepared to administer and take the online assessment. Meanwhile, training is ongoing for test administrators who will administer the exam to students in grades 4, 7 and 11, according to officials.
“We will also continue working with our administrators and teachers to ensure that the online assessments remain fair, accessible and are administered appropriately to all students,” Education Commissioner Donna Frett-Gregory said. “Working to make sure that the proper technological infrastructure is in place before the testing begins will also be a top priority. We will also remain committed to improving the technical support and training provided to teachers on assessment practices.”
Nationwide, studies show that a large majority of educators are enthusiastic about the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and expect them to lead to greater student achievement. While it is not expected that student testing scores will show a dramatic jump during the 2014-2015 school year — the first official year of VIDE’s newly adopted Common Core assessments — teachers have said they look forward to seeing achievement steadily increase as students become more exposed to the rigorous curriculum.
For more information, visit: http://www.smarterbalanced.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Smarter-Balanced-Teachers.pdf
Questions found at http://www.smarterbalanced.org/practice-test/ are similar to those that will be featured in the field test this May and the operational test being conducted by VIDE during the 2014-2015 school year. Most children will be tested online during this time.
Parents can also visit www.corestandards.org for more information about the Common Core State Standards.

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