How do districts, schools and teachers use the work
of the Content Collaboratives?
Are use of these measures of student academic learning
mandatory?
These instruments are for voluntary school and district
use. They will not be used in the district or school
performance frameworks for accountability.
What if my district wants to use its own assessments?
If a district chooses to create, augment or purchase
other fair and reliable assessments not identified by
the state, CDE encourages the district to verify that
they “meet or exceed” the quality expectations set forth
by the Content Collaboratives by evaluating their
assessments using the
Assessment Review Tool.
How do these assessments align with the state
assessments?
The assessments in the
CDE
Resource Bank identified as Recommended or Partially
Recommended are aligned in part or in whole to the
Colorado Academic Standards, including content and depth
of knowledge. The new state summative assessments will
also be designed to align with the Colorado Academic
Standards.
Will these be used for school or district
accountability?
These instruments are for voluntary
school and district use. They
will not be used in the district or school performance
frameworks for accountability.
Who is helping the Content Collaboratives?
Professional learning that is aligned to reform goals
and structured around authentic work performed by
educators themselves with the support of experts has the
greatest potential for being implemented and refined at
the classroom level, allowing successes and challenges
to be captured and reported to benefit all participants.
(Scott Marion)
CDE, in partnership with the National Center for
Assessment and the Center for Educational Testing and
Evaluation, facilitate and support the work and meetings
of the Content Collaboratives. Nationally recognized
content area researchers sought out and gathered many of
the assessments that the Content Collaboratives reviewed
in Phase 1, and a Technical Steering Committee made
recommendations as to how these assessments could be
used in an educator’s evaluation and how technical
reliability could be achieved.
What are the products?
National Content Area Researchers:
• Offer qualified assessments pooled from states,
districts, countries, vendors, universities, etc. to the
Content Collaboratives for consideration
Collaborative Members:
• Using validated criteria, identify currently available
assessments per content area that are fair and unbiased,
aligned to CAS and could be used in evaluation of
educators Identify remaining gaps;
• Using validated criteria, work to begin filling the
gaps by developing performance assessments.
Technical Steering Committee:
• Creates guiding principles and quality criteria for
collaboratives to use in reviewing and creating
measures;
• Reviews recommendations of collaboratives;
• Creates framework for vetting all assessments being
considered for the resource bank (from collaboratives,
schools, districts, other states, etc).
What are the long-term goals of the collaboratives?
The vision is for the Content Collaboratives to become
networks for creating and disseminating innovative
teaching practices. Long term goals include:
• Increasing student achievement through improved
instructional and assessment practices in every
classroom;
• Enacting Colorado’s education reform initiatives in
every classroom;
• Establishing authentic and active participation in
reform initiatives by educators across Colorado;
• Implementing more effective use of district
professional development budgets and time;
• Decreasing the need for remediation.
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