Smarter Balanced: An Online Assessment Measuring the New Common Core State Standards While Meeting Students' Individual Needs

• In Event: 52.042 - Has the Next Generation of State Assessment Programs and Assessment Platforms Considered Linguistic, Social, and Cultural Inclusivity?

Abstract

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) consists of 23 states and affiliates that include over 19 million students. These students represent diverse languages and assessment needs. As a result, Smarter Balanced has developed a conceptual framework for assessment accessibility resources that requires a shift from focusing on a student group’s needs to individual student needs. States agree that a focus on groups, such as English language learners or students with disabilities, fails to account for the heterogeneity that exists within each. To assist states in this paradigm shift, Smarter Balanced created the Usability, Accessibility, and Accommodations Guidelines, which lists the available accessibility resources by level of adult involvement in selecting accessibility resources that meet individual student need(s) as well as particular testing need. The consortium also produced the Individual Student Assessment Accessibility Profile (ISAAP) tool. Through the ISAAP, an automated tool, educators knowledgeable of the student classroom and testing experiences must begin by identifying a student’s need and then selecting from the accessibility resources tagged to address that particular need. This presentation will explain the consortium’s conceptual framework and provide examples of the theory in action.

Author

• Magda Chia, UCLA