Smarter Balanced scores set new baseline for students’ progress toward college and career readiness

Statewide assessment results released today provide a new baseline for how Delaware students are performing in English language arts and mathematics. The 2015 Smarter Balanced Assessment results are the first ever scores for the test, which is aligned with the Common Core – Delaware’s new, higher, academic standards. By focusing on skills most important for students to succeed in college and the workplace, the results provide teachers and families with a snapshot of children’s progress, helping identify school and student strengths, as well as areas in which they need support.

Statewide, more than half of students in third through eighth grades and in grade 11 were “proficient’ or better in English. In math, almost 39 percent were statewide. Delaware students outperformed estimates – based on a 2014 national field test — in both subjects for every grade with the exception of 11^th grade math.

More than four million students took the field test that was used to set expectations for how students would perform when Smarter Balanced was first offered last spring. Following that test, educators, school leaders, higher education faculty, parents and others worked together to develop benchmarks for students to reach different achievement levels (one through four), with students scoring 3 or 4 considered “proficient.”

At the time, then-Smarter Balanced Executive Director Joe Willhoft noted: “Because the new content standards set higher expectations for students and the new tests are designed to assess student performance against those higher standards, the bar has been raised. It’s not surprising that fewer students could score at Level 3 or higher. However, over time the performance of students will improve.”

Grade-level results in English language arts/literacy ranged from a high of 55.5 percent scoring proficient or higher in fifth grade to a low of 48.5 percent in sixth grade. In math, the grade-level results ranged from a high of 53.1 percent in third grade to a low of 23.3 percent in grade 11.

“The Smarter Assessment is harder, and different, from any of our past state assessments. It tests more skills than we’ve ever tested before and does so more rigorously,” Gov. Jack Markell said. “We made this change because these are the skills our children will need to succeed in the rest of their careers and we need to provide them with as much help and support as we can while they are still in our care.

“As we all expected, the overall results of this more rigorous assessment show that we still have a lot of work to do to prepare all of our students for college and careers, but we know our schools continue to make progress, and we are pleased that the results are better than anticipated by the national test.” he said.

As a governing state in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, Delaware partnered with other states to develop the Smarter Balanced Assessment System. Delaware educators have been integral to many aspects of the new assessment system, including question development, standard setting, report development and the creation of professional learning resources for teachers. In spring 2014, educators and students across Delaware participated in the successful national field test of new assessment items and the accompanying technology.

Today’s release included aggregate and grade-level results for the two subjects at the state, district and school levels. Final results, which also will include additional analysis looking at scores by student subgroup, will be released on Thursday, September 17, in conjunction with the State Board of Education meeting.

Statewide English Language Arts Projected vs Actual Proficiency

Note: “Projected” is based on the national field test conducted in Spring 2014. “Actual DE” are the results from Delaware students on the 2015 Smarter assessment.

Statewide Mathematics Projected vs Actual Proficiency

Note: “Projected” is based on the national field test conducted in spring 2014. “Actual DE” are the results from Delaware students on the 2015 Smarter Balanced assessment.

About Smarter Balanced

The Smarter Balanced results measure Delaware students’ progress toward the academic goals laid out in the Common Core State Standards, which were designed to ensure students have the skills and knowledge they need in jobs and college. The standards set learning expectations for what students should know or what skills they should master at the completion of each grade level. Individual districts determine their own curricula and decide how those skills and knowledge are best taught.

Based on the first administration of a completely new state assessment that is aligned to new, more rigorous standards, the 2015 Smarter results represent a new baseline for Delaware students’ performance in English language arts/literacy and mathematics.

The new Smarter exams test different content and skills than the old exams (Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System or DCAS) tested so the scores cannot be compared directly. Recognizing this transition, the state is delaying the use of the results for teacher evaluations for the next two years. As expected, the results look different from those under the old test. This does not mean that students are learning less. Rather, it reflects that the bar has been set higher.

The new Smarter test asks students to demonstrate and apply their knowledge and skills in areas such as critical thinking, analytical writing, and problem solving.

“The results reflect a change in expectations for what students should know and be able to do, not a change in their abilities,” Secretary of Education Mark Murphy said.

While the transition to Common Core required some shifts in ELA, particularly regarding the use of more complex texts and in the areas of research and writing, the biggest changes from Delaware’s previous standards were in mathematics. Changes included the scope and sequence of material as well as procedural methodology. Because of the extent of shifts needed, the transition has been more significant in mathematics compared to ELA in many classrooms.

Over the past few years, the department has provided professional learning to thousands of educators across the state to support this transition, and in the coming year, the state will continue to offer quality professional learning opportunities for educators, particularly those who teach mathematics.  The state also will offer competitive incentive grants for districts and charters to further their educators’ professional learning around Common Core. And the state is looking at other innovative professional learning opportunities to strengthen supports for Delaware’s math educators.

Value of the assessment results

While no single test can give a complete picture of achievement, annual assessments can provide important information about student progress and areas for improvement, especially when combined with student grades and teacher reports.

Educators use the assessment data in many ways. The scores are used to examine how well students are doing in districts, schools, grades and individual classrooms. Importantly, districts use this data to investigate how aligned their curriculum is to the standards—what children should know and be able to do in each grade. They also use it to make decisions about where to focus professional learning for their educators. Principals can use this information to help understand if certain grades or classrooms are doing especially well and should be models—or identify where teachers or students might need extra professional development or support. Teachers can use the information about their current students to see if extra focus is warranted in a specific skill area.

“This is important data for our schools as a whole. It gives us a baseline so that our educators can use the results to identify students’ strengths and needs to be addressed this year. It also gives us important information about where curricula is well aligned to the standards or where we need to adjust it this year,” Colonial School District Superintendent Dusty Blakey said.

Indian River Superintendent Susan Bunting agreed.

“Our teachers will be digging into these data in the coming weeks as they meet with their peers in professional learning communities, looking for trends that show how their classes and schools can adjust instruction to better prepare students with the skills they need,” she said.

New Castle County Vo-Tech Superintendent Vicki Gehrt, president of the Delaware Chief School Officers’ Association, said the results establish a new baseline that “enables all of us to know where our students stand regarding their Smarter score.

“Whether they want to go to college or straight into the workplace, students need to be able to think critically and solve complex problems,” she said.  “We must collectively stand committed to providing our teachers the necessary professional development and resources to further strengthen their instructional delivery, ensuring that our students have the skills to empower their future success.”

Nationally, states are in various stages of score reporting. In time, scores of all states using the assessment will be aggregated and provide more context for student performance across the country.

Find results by district and school here.

For more information about the new assessments, families should visit www.DelExcels.org.

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Photos from the event

Showcase how collaborative professional learning is changing Delaware classrooms

Dover, DE – Nearly 400 educators packed a large auditorium at Dover Downs Monday, April 20^th to showcase how they are engaging their students more deeply in learning, using techniques and strategies they picked up by participating in the Department of Education’s rigorous, year-long professional learning experience called Common Ground.

The 2015 Bright Spots Common Ground 2.0 Celebration brought together educators from fifteen districts and eight charter schools from around the state. Common Ground was created to support educators as they transitioned to the Common Core State Standards, which are grade level expectations in English language arts and mathematics that are designed with college and career readiness in mind.

“You represent an impressive coalition of leaders dedicated to doing whatever it takes to give every Delaware student the best chance for success,” Governor Jack Markell told the group. “You have taken on the tough but important work of making the standards come to life in the classroom.”

Gov. Markell was among the governors who led the effort to create the Common Core standards, which are being used in more than 40 states. “These new standards mean nothing unless our teachers have the support they need to make them work,” he said.

Supporting Educators with Race to the Top

Common Ground provided clinics, online webinars, large-scale meetings of participants, national experts as speakers and ways for participants to collaborate. It was one of the ways the state used funds from its federal Race to the Top grant to support educators as they transition to the Common Core standards.

“Delaware is changing the way educators engage in professional learning,” Michael Watson, the DOE’s Chief Academic Officer, told the group. “We know that effective professional learning is very intensive, it’s ongoing, and 100 percent connected to practice and student outcomes.  That’s what Common Ground embodies.”

In a survey conducted earlier this year, 89 percent of Common Ground teachers and principals said they were using what they had learned in the sessions to give students assignments that required them to have deeper knowledge; 86 percent said the Common Ground sessions had helped them engage students in their learning with expectations aligned with the Common Core.

Keynote speaker Steve Leinwand, a principal research analyst at American Institutes for Research and a nationally recognized leader in mathematics education, praised the way Common Ground was helping teachers make the transition to the Common Core standards.

“The expectations for teachers have really been ramped up,” Leinwand said. “The only places that I have seen consistently high-quality instruction and teaching and learning aligned to the Common Core is where there is collaborative structures and coaching. Teachers need time to interact.”

Discovering Students’ Needs

Educators at Shields Elementary School (Cape Henlopen) used formative assessment techniques learned through Common Ground to discover that their students had not mastered key mathematical concepts, even though their test scores were high. This led to a school-wide implementation of Number Talks, a program that provides students with the computational fluency to prove, reason and defend math answers in the classroom.

“It is exciting to be able to use professional development that really reaches all students,” Shields Elementary Principal Jenny Nauman said. “What we’ve been able to do is give them confidence in the classroom and the ability to share what they are thinking and follow someone else’s reasoning too.”

Nauman and a group of Shields Elementary teacher leaders presented their Number Talks findings at the 2015 National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) National Conference in Boston this spring.

Including Everyone in the Transition to New Standards

Bobbi Kilgore, Principal at Banneker Elementary (Milford) agreed that Common Ground has been a huge benefit to their school. In the two years that Banneker has been a part of Common Ground, not only have Common Core elements been implemented in traditional classrooms, but expressive arts teachers are also implementing curriculum changes.

“We’ve included everyone in our building in the changes we’ve made through Common Ground,” Kilgore said. “What we’re learning has taken on a culture within our school so that teachers really work together. They find out what students are really struggling with and then find a way to reach them.”

Odyssey Charter School in Wilmington is implementing more math reasoning in the classroom thanks to Common Ground. “Common Ground has led me to ask more challenging, more open-ended questions,” math teacher Vassilios Guidoglou said. “We’re getting answers you wouldn’t expect, and that’s really extending student learning to the next level.”

Intriguing Students

Math teacher Brittany Rehrig said the biggest takeaway from her Common Ground experience was learning to construct lessons that intrigue students. “When students are captivated, they’re more collaborative,” she said. “They feed off each other and have really positive communications. It’s not old-fashioned instruction that grabs their attention anymore.”

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