Question # Criteria Evidence 2.12 B.1 Assessing student reading and writing achievement in both ELA and literacy: The assessments are English language arts and literacy that are based on an aligned balance of high-quality literary and informational texts. Provide test blueprints and other specifications as well as exemplar literary and informational passages for each grade level, demonstrating the expectations below are met. Texts are balanced across literary and informational text types and across genres, with more informational than literary texts used as the assessments move up in the grade bands, as the State’s standards require. Texts and other stimuli (e.g., audio, visual, graphic) are previously published or of publishable quality. They are content-rich, exhibit exceptional craft and thought, and/or provide useful information. History/social studies and science/technical specifically, reflect the quality of writing that is produced by authorities in the particular academic discipline. 2.13 B.2 Focusing on complexity of texts: The assessments require appropriate levels of text complexity; they raise the bar for text complexity each year so students are ready for the demands of college- and career-level reading no later than the end of high school. Multiple forms of authentic, previously published texts are assessed, including written, audio, visual, and graphic, as technology and assessment constraints permit. Provide text complexity measurements, exemplar literary and informational passages for each level, and other evidence (e.g., data, tools, procedures) to demonstrate the expectations below are met. At each grade, reading texts have sufficient complexity, and the average complexity of texts increases grade-by-grade, meeting college- and career-ready levels by the end of high school. A rationale and evidence are provided for how text complexity is quantitatively and qualitatively measured and used to place each text at the appropriate grade level. 2.14 B.3 Requiring students to read closely and use evidence from texts: Reading assessments Provide test blueprints and specifications as well as exemplar test items for each grade level, demonstrating the expectations below are met.
2.26 D.1 Focusing on student achievement and progress to readiness: Score reports illustrate a student’s progress on the continuum toward college and career readiness, grade by grade, and course by course. Reports stress the most important content, skills, and processes, and how the assessment focuses on them, to show whether or not students are on track to readiness. Provide a list of reports, and for each report, a sample that at a minimum: Scores and sub-scores that will be reported with emphasis on the most important content, skills, and processes for each or course; Explanations of results that are instructionally valuable and easily understood by essentially all audiences; Results expressed in terms of performance standards (i.e., proficiency “cut scores”), not just scale scores or percentiles; and Progress on the continuum toward college and career readiness, which can be expressed by whether a student has sufficiently mastered the current grade or course content and is therefore prepared for the next level. (Note: Not all reporting information need be numerical; for example, actual student work on a released item could be presented, along with the rubric for the item and a discussion of common errors.) Provide evidence that the reporting structure can be supported by the assessment design, including data confirming that test blueprints include a sufficient number of items for each reporting category, so that scores and sub-scores lead to the intended interpretations and minimize the possibility of misinterpretation. 2.27 D.2 Providing timely data that inform instruction: Reports are instructionally valuable, easy to understand by all audiences, and delivered in time to provide useful, actionable data to students, parents, and teachers. Provide a timeline and evidence to show when assessment results will be available for each report. Provide a description of the process and technology that will be used to issue reports in as timely a manner as possible. Provide evidence, including results of user testing, to demonstrate the utility of the reports for each intended audience.