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Show A-8 The Park Record Wed/Thurs/Fri, June 20-22, 2018 Utah bids adieu to SAGE Student hopes to develop exam, replaces with RISE connections a world away Older students are set to take the Utah Aspire Plus CAROLYN WEBBER The Park Record Next spring, students in Utah will be taking a new exam. The Utah State Board of Education announced earlier this month that it has selected the Utah Aspire Plus test for ninth- and 10th-grade statewide assessments. Students in grades three through eight will take the RISE (Readiness. Improvement. Success. Empowerment.) test. The exams will replace the controversial SAGE tests, which the state used to test students between third and 11th grade beginning in 2013. The Board voted last year to not renew its contract with the vendor that developed the SAGE exam, American Institutes for Research. Andrew Frink, director of technology and assessment for the Park City School District, said that the Utah Aspire Plus test will include a blend of questions from the ACT Aspire test and the current grade nine and 10 questions from SAGE. He said that it is similar in structure and scoring to the ACT, which might be a “real selling point” to students who have previously chosen to not take the statewide exam. “It is a great chance to practice for the ACT,” he said. Younger students who take the RISE exam will also notice changes. One of the main differences between the SAGE and RISE tests is that RISE will be multistage adaptive, meaning that students will be able to go back to questions that they skipped, Frink said. With SAGE, students did not have that option because each question was determined by the answer the student provided on the previous question. RISE will use similar meth- ods, but the next set of questions will be determined by how the student answers a block of questions. RISE will also only offer the writing portion to fifth and eighth grade students. Students will receive a separate score for that section, according to a press release. When SAGE was first offered, a writing portion was included in all of the grades. Last year, students in grades three through eight had a writing prompt and the score was included in the overall score. The test will, however, in- “I’m hoping that now that we have a different model here, that we will be able to explain to (parents and students) how useful this will be to them and to us,” Andrew Frink, Director of technology and assessment corporate questions from the same bank of questions used by SAGE. This will make it possible to maintain the trend data gathered from SAGE tests, Frink said. RISE and Utah Aspire Plus will also continue to be taken at the end of the school year. He said that the continuity of the data is beneficial to the district and the state. The Utah Board of Education signed 10year contracts with both the Questar Assessment Inc. for the RISE test and with Pearson for the Utah Aspire Plus test. He said that the longer contracts will help provide stability in the data. When SAGE was implemented five years ago, the contract was for only five years. “A good assessment is critical for good education,” he said. The change happens as optout rates in Park City for the SAGE exam continued to increase, with parents questioning the benefits of having their children participate in standardized testing. Utah law mandates annual testing, but parents are able to opt their children out from taking the statewide exam. The opt-out rate at Park City High School was 47 percent during the 2016-17 school year, a 9 percent increase from the previous year. Treasure Mountain Junior High and Ecker Hill Middle School had 26 percent opt-out rates. The state’s opt-out rates have also been increasing. They jumped from 3.1 percent to 5.9 percent in two years. Frink said that the opt-out rates from the 2017-18 school year have not yet been reported. School officials have said in recent years that, when so many students choose to not take the exam, the district and state cannot use the results as a valid benchmark. The scores in Park City, they say, have often been artificially low, resulting in the district’s schools earning poor marks in annual state-assigned grades that are based off the tests. “We struggled to help students to understand that there really was value with the SAGE test,” Frink said. “I’m hoping that now that we have a different model here, that we will be able to explain to them how useful this will be to them and to us.” Frink said that some district employees will have to complete additional training over the summer and throughout the school year to prepare for the new exams, but he does not predict any major changes. He said that the Utah Aspire Plus test is administered in a similar way to the ACT. Due to changes in leadership taking place in the district, he said that his goal is to keep the test changes smooth and as “stable as possible.” INTRODUCING OUR SOLAR-POWERED HEATED DRIVEWAYS It is time to say goodbye to shoveling and snow removal forever. Get A Free Estimate 435.731.8424 www.ontopse.com He is one of several U.S. teens going to Taiwan CAROLYN WEBBER The Park Record Three years ago, Evan Lawing said goodbye to his sister as she left for Oman for a seven-week language immersion program. When she returned, he heard about the positive experiences she had and decided that, as soon as he could, he would follow her footsteps. Lawing, who will be a junior at Park City High School in the fall, recently departed for the same program in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, to study Chinese. Like his sister, he was awarded the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) scholarship by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. He is set to return in August. Lawing was one of 670 students from around the U.S. selected out of more than 3,300 applicants to participate in the program. Other students will be studying Arabic, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Indonesian and Russian in countries around the world, according to a press release. The NSLI-Y program was created in 2006 to encourage U.S. youth to learn critical foreign languages and develop a deeper cross-cultural understanding. Lawing is eager to do both. “I’m nervous because it’s a new culture and something I haven’t experienced before. But I am excited because I get to live with a Taiwanese family and I get to learn about their culture, their food and their language,” he said. Lawing’s interest in the Chinese language and culture began as a child. While living in Virginia, he took courses in Chinese, which he has continued to take since his family moved to Park City. During the application pro- PHOTO BY AMANDA LAWING Evan Lawing was recently selected to participate in an immersive program in Taiwan. He was awarded a scholarship from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. cess last October, he was asked to select at least two languages he’d like to study if selected. He only listed Chinese because of his dedication to the language. As part of the application, he wrote essays, received letters of recommendation and did in-person interviews. Then, a few weeks ago, he received an email telling him that he was selected for the program and would be living in Taiwan. Lawing is perhaps most excited to be immersed in the language and culture. In addition to living with a Taiwanese family, he’ll attend classes with other teens from around the U.S. for half of the day. After classes, he plans to spend time with his host family and explore Taiwan with his classmates. He hopes to come away from the experience with the ability to help teach people in the U.S. about Taiwanese and Chinese culture. He said that learning about other people’s way of life is important to him. “More and more in the news, I’m hearing about things that (show) people trying to separate the world,” he said. “Everyone is thinking that we are so different from each other when, on a basic level, we are all really similar.” |