Notes From the Assessment Manager
Dear CTE community,
Wow! The summer flew by in the blink of an eye, and the 2017 school year is in full swing. As we enter a new school year, the assessment staff at the Research and Curriculum Unit turns our attention to fall MS-CPAS testing. We have just started a new 10-year contract with the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE), which we hope continues our efforts to assist administrators and educators in career and technical education (CTE) in improving instructional strategies and student outcomes through the data we provide in the coming years. The overarching theme for the new requirements of our partnership with MDE centers around aligning most aspects of CTE assessment practices with the MDE Office of Student Assessment's assessment and reporting practices. We have finalized our plans for year one based on this theme. Here are a few things that are on the horizon relative to assessment for administrators and educators to look out for:
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Practice assessments for all secondary career pathways
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Addition of an Assessment 201 Online Course
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Increased focus on writing more rigorous items to more tightly
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Standard setting meetings - phased in over time
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Change in Reporting - scale score and 5 performance level reporting
At the end of this month, we will conduct a NEW Test Coordinator Training at Mississippi State University. The focus of the professional-learning event will be a working meeting that will allow test coordinators that are new or relatively new to the CTE testing learn more about all of the initiatives related to assessment that MDE implements annually for districts. We will also have an interactive data verification/submission session. The intent of this session is to help participants gain confidence with the test ordering process prior to live testing.
As part of our new work, you'll be receiving a newsletter like this once a month with information on assessment updates. Please make an effort to distribute the information to all parties if needed. Thank you again for all the hard work each of you does for CTE. We are really excited about what the future holds for the students in the state of Mississippi!
Sincerely,
Dr. Sean Owen
Associate Research Professor/Assessment Manager
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