OCR Text |
Show School testina to have more meaning By DONETA GATHERUM FARMINGTON-Tesis, the most common measure of what a student has learned, will be used in more meaningful ways in Davis School District because of the new student assessment program that has just been developed by David Steele, district research and evaluation The district will ' continue to evaluate high school achievement through the ACT college entrance test and AP exams. During the fall of 1990, all ninth grade students will take the CPP (Career Planning and Preparation) tesL This is a new program for Davis County. A computer aided test item bank for teachers to use in math, science and perhaps social studies will be available for use this spring. Steele hopes the extensive testing program the district is starting will become a means of improving the education being offered to students. All testing information will be carefully placed on student's permanent per-manent records. Teachers will learn how to interpret the information in ways that will help students. specialist. This new plan comes in response to Governor Norman Bangerter's Jan. 12, 1987 letter to district superintendents which indicated that reporting to parents and to the public should be a critical activity to be accomplished by school districts. The governor's feelings are indicative of broad-based support sup-port for accountability in the public schools of Utah. Steele's report defines the scope of reporting practices, identifies formats and provides a set of guidelines for schools in the district in preparing school-based performance perfor-mance reports. The testing program will provide a consistent method of tracking and identifying student progress based upon a combination of national, state and district curriculum standards. stan-dards. Once the program is established, the district will be able to publish an annual performance report with several different kinds of information informa-tion including subject matter assessment, end-of-level trends, norm reference trends, interests and aptitudes, student progress report and identification of instructional trends. Eventually the testing program will allow educators to give individualized in-dividualized student educational planning and placement and offer meaningful information support for teachers, students, parents and administrators. ad-ministrators. Testing starts early with the Brigance kindergarten entry test. As a child progresses through the system, pre-tests and end of level tests are given in most core curriculum cur-riculum courses. Standardized core assessment tests have been developed for many subjects. The SAT (Stanford Achievement Test) measuring six basic skill levelsreading, mathematics, language, listening, science and social studies will be given only to chapter one schools in the spring. Others will take this test in the fall so the results can be used to help determine appropriate instruction in-struction for students during the school year. |