Oswego City School District
Assessment Audit
• Why?
• Here's
What
Rewrite
Replace
Reduce
Create
• Now
What?
Teaching is the Core Grant
2014-2015
Committee Members
Karen Breen
Mary Beth Fierro
Suzanne Fox
Dean Goewey
Jim Livingston
Michele Lloyd
Lisa McPherson
Carrie Patane
Carrie Plasse
Laura Ryder
• So
What?
Teaching Is The Core Grant
CiTi (BOCES) received a “Teaching is the Core” grant in the amount of $199,
831 from the New York State Education Department. This grant is funded
through New York’s federal Race to the Top grant. As a consortium CiTi and
Fulton, APW, Oswego, and Mexico will work to identify and improve highquality assessments as part of a larger balanced assessment system. District
teams will review and refine current assessments ensuring that current
practices are aligned and contribute to teaching and learning. This effort
supports New York’s Commissioner of Education John B. King and the State
Board of Regents priority to eliminate or modify locally adopted tests that are
redundant or do not advance teaching and learning.
The CiTi consortium will work with Jennifer Borgioli from Learner-Centered
Initiatives and will also coordinate with OCM BOCES consortium as teams
further develop understanding of quality assessment practices and work to
refine local assessments. After the initial teams complete their work, staff
from CiTi School Improvement Team will continue to implement the process
with other teams and districts to review, revise and develop quality
assessments including performance- based assessment.
The following report outlines Oswego City School District’s involvement in the
grant and the steps taken to review our assessments.
Rationale:
The entry point for the 2014-2015 Assessment Audit Committee is USEFULNESS.
The Committee will look at the usefulness of the K-12 mandated assessments. The
audit team defines the usefulness as informing instruction, measuring growth,
and utilizing classroom time productively.
The team started by looking at the data from one vendor created assessment
being used for benchmarking in both ELA and mathematics and APPR to see if
there was a correlation between state assessment scale score and vendor created
assessment scale score. Results are shown in Appendix A.
Guiding Questions
1. How much time is spent taking mandated tests?
2. To what degree do the assessments results correlate to NYS assessment
results?
3. To what degree are teachers able to use test data to inform instruction as
measured by alignment to CCLS?
Process:
The audit was conducted as a result of being part of the “Teacher is the Core
Grant” awarded by NYSED to several schools in our region (OCM/CITI). The
purpose of the TiTC Grant is to improve the quality of local assessments that are
currently in use, and to also reduce the number of local assessments that are
perceived not to inform instruction. Learning Centered Initiatives, represented by
Jennifer Borgioli worked in collaboration with districts to meet the goals of the
grant.
Our district team met to create the rational and guiding questions to guide the
audit based on our assumption of our current practices in assessment.
When the data did not fully support our first assumption, our next steps were to
collect evidence to support the claim to eliminate some final exams in 7th through
12th grade and create more authentic assessments.
 Rubrics were used to focus on alignment/validity, impact on instruction,
diversity, and reliability of current final exams
 Students in grade 8th were surveyed for usefulness of final exams
Recommendations:
The audit found the assessments reviewed were used primarily for assigning
grades and did not provide student feedback for strengths and areas in need of
improvement. Given this outcome, the committee decided to change or eliminate
some of the final assessments in some core subjects and replace them with
authentic assessments, that were project-based, to include students in showing
their own growth throughout the year.
1. How many assessments were reviewed? 14
2. Of those, how many were kept as is? 10
3. Of those reviewed, how many were eliminated? 4
4. Of those reviewed, how many were decided to modify? 4
5. From the review, how many alternative assessments will be created? 0
Appendix
A. Correlation to the Fall Vendor created Assessment/NYS Assessment
Grade 3 Math
0.7164
Grade 4 Math
Grade 8 Math
Grade 5 Math
Grade 6 Math
0.6995
0.7282
0.7797
0.8036
Grade 7 Math
0.7686
Grade 3 ELA
0.7875
Grade 4 ELA
Grade 5 ELA
Grade 6 ELA
Grade 7 ELA
0.7728
0.8006
0.7511
0.7523
Grade 8 ELA
Regents ELA
0.8108
0.648
These are moderate positive correlations.
These are strong positive correlations
These are strong positive correlations
This is a moderate positive correlation.
Grade(s) Subject
Exam
Type
Alignment
and Validity
Diversified and
Balanced
Impact on
Instruction
Reliability
10-12
Final (½
year)
Final ( ½
year)
Final (½
year)
Final (½
year)
Final (½
year)
Final (½
year)
Final (½
year)
Final
(year)
Final year
Final year
Final year
Final year
Final year
Final year
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
2
2
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
1
10-12
Math Apps
A
Math Apps
B
Math Apps
C
Math 12A
10-12
Math 12B
10-12
Topics
Geometry
Topics Trig
10-12
10-12
10-12
10-12
9
7
8
7
8
9
Pre Calc
Honors
FOA
Math
Math
English
English
English