The commissioner spoke to the opening meeting of this month's SBOE meeting. These are my notes and interpretations. My words. Nothing about this is official.
Here's the link to the audio.
Here are the highlights from my notes.
1. TEKS GUIDES: They are working on materials to support the field. TEA is creating a TEKS guide to support new TEKS. It will include what grade level, rigorous student work looks like. It will help teachers unpack the assessment and give a standard interpretation of the TEKS. They hope to have sample assessment items linked to each standard. They are trying to make sure that this material becomes a bridge between standards and assessments. They are going to start with SLAR and hope to have things ready by Spring of 2020. They won't be able to release everything at once, but will roll things out as they are finalized.
2. INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS PORTAL: They are working on an Instructional Materials Portal. (This is not required by law.) This will be a place where information will be available for TEA and the field to review the new Proclamation materials using a rubric. The portal will also make it possible for us to see what materials are associated with assessment gains. The commissioner likened it to the What Works Clearinghouse. The example he gave was about which materials were being used by schools that received A ratings. He also said that lesson study findings could also support this work. They may begin with review about the items that we know where students traditionally struggle. They are hoping to report effect size for the materials for specific areas of content. Only materials submitted through the official process would be included. Note: This kind of narrow level analysis is hard to do. We will need to see how this develops.
3. OPEN SOURCE: TEA is working on legislative requirements to create open source materials. They will hire a vendor to create the materials. The vendor cannot sell the materials. Anyone can use the materials for free. Textbook companies can license the materials, develop them, and use them in their textbooks. They will be sending out an RFP soon.
4. Reading Academies: They are working on adding instructional materials, examples of student level work, and assessment items to match the training. They hope to bring in materials from the Proclamations to support the training.
5. BUILDING NEW ASSESSMENTS: When creating assessments in the past, they have done a reverse review with the existing test bank to see what matched the new standards. The commissioner wants a better approach to that process that begins with the standards, creates a new blueprint, creates new assessment samples, then field testing, etc. to build the item bank directly from the standards.
6. STANDARD ADOPTION TIMELINES: Because all of these ideas are time intensive, the commissioner suggests that we reconsider the standard adoption timelines. Morath says that this kind of process is complex and needs 2-3 years for development. It might even require extending the Proclamations across bienniums. Board members suggested that there should also be a delay before STAAR test scores (for new TEKS subjects) would be used for accountability purposes - a Report/Report/Use cycle. That means that kids would take STAAR for two years and scores would be reported. On the third year, scores would be used for accountability. (NOTE: That was PROPOSED. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY WILL DO YET.)
7. HARVEY and ACCOUNTABILITY: There are three options the agency is looking at to establish meaningful cut points on how they will use test scores and participation for accountability. First, they are thinking about running the data twice. Once with everyone. And then a second time removing students who were impacted by the storm. Second, they are looking at the degree of a student body that was effected, the number of instructional days missed, and if schools had to move locations. Third, they are looking at how many school staff were displaced or homeless during this year as well. They are working on respectful solutions for the situation.
8. SPED Investigation: The federal review is complete. They have submitted an initial plan and a timeline. They are working on a comprehensive plan to submit to the feds by April.
9. PROCLAMATION 2019: Proclamation 2019 goes forward as planed. Stay tuned for accountability requirements (perhaps a Mulligan?) for 3-8 in 2020.
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