Digital Directions - Fall 2012 - (Page 22)

1,800-student Hilldale school system says her district doesn’t have the staff or technology it will need to implement the common-core assessments. For example, though the district’s elementary school has 400 students, the building has only 43 computers. “With the current financial constraints facing Oklahoma public schools, I do not see how most of us will be able to provide adequate hardware and prepare staff to manage the level of testing being planned, especially in a short testing window,” Coody writes in an e-mail. The vast majority of states have adopted the new standards in English/language arts and mathematics and have also signed on to provide online testing under the standards starting in the 2014-15 school year. Two consortia received federal funding to create online tests; both intend to use technology for interactive test questions, simulations, new graphics, and faster exam results. The two groups—the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC—are also in the process of sketching out the technology standards schools will need for the assessment process. Both consortia have released some technology guidelines that call for having specific technologies in place, such as computing devices that have at least 1 gigabyte of computer memory, a screen display size of 9.5 inches or greater, and access to the Internet. Thin on Tech. Data But a free, Web-based Technology Readiness Tool—introduced earlier this year to collect information about the types of technology schools and districts now have— has not gathered as much data as the consortia had hoped. At a meeting in early August of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress, Jeff Nellhaus, PARCC’s director of assessment, reported that only 36 percent of schools in the states backing his coalition responded to the first round of the survey, which closed July 15. Joe Willhoft, the executive director of Smarter Balanced, said his consortium had “thin results” as well. According to the consortia, 32 states and the District of Columbia each submitted information on five or more schools. About 25,000 schools submitted comprehensive information about their technology status. The two consortia have a combined 44 states and the District of Columbia as members. A low response rate to the survey of schools’ current technology profiles could point to a lack of infrastructure and the ability to assemble the technology data, some observers say. However, Tony Alpert, the chief operating officer for Smarter Balanced, cautions that it was just the first of several rounds of data collection, and that the two coalitions expect to collect significantly more information. “We’re limiting the conclusions we make based on the data,” he says. The consortia released few findings from the initial round of data-gathering, but did say that computer memory capacity, or RAM, does not appear to be a problem for most schools responding to the survey, and that neither does screen size of computer devices. Most districts are using desktops and laptops or netbooks, although the use of tablets is growing, Alpert says. Louisiana, though, took the data collection one step further. With the information collected through the readiness tool, the parameters provided by the consortia, and the state’s own estimates of how long the testing window is likely to be and how many hours the testing may take, Louisiana estimated schools would need a 22 >> www.digitaldirections.org  http://www.edweek.org/go/newsletters http://www.edweek.org/go/newsletters http://www.digitaldirections.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Directions - Fall 2012

Digital Directions - Fall 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
DD Site Visit
Bits & Bytes
Shifting to Adaptive Testing
Tailoring the Tests To Special Needs?
Choosing the Right Device
Bandwidth Demand Rising
Are You Ready?
Where’s the Money?
High-Priority Virtual PD
Online PD Destinations
Virtual Ed. Dives In to the Common Core
Open Education Resources Surge
Security

Digital Directions - Fall 2012

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