In about 15 minutes, Governor Markell will be giving a speech indicating Smarter Balanced scores will be used for acceptance credentials at the four major Delaware colleges and universities: University of Delaware, Delaware Technical College, Delaware State University and Wilmington University.
This decision was made without any input from members of the 148th General Assembly. Once again Governor Markell and the Delaware DOE are operating without any stakeholder input whatsoever. The test hasn’t even completed and the scores won’t be out until the summer, so how can this be used as a measuring indicator for students when we don’t even know how effective the test is?
The email regarding this was sent out earlier today:
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2015 11:57 AM
To: Haberstroh, Susan (K12)
Subject: Smarter Balance Assessment and Delaware Higher Education Institutions Announcement
Dear Legislator,
We wanted to provide you with a heads up of an announcement being made today regarding the Smarter Assessments and how four of our institutions of higher education have agreed to use these assessments. A press event is happening at 1:00 today where the Governor will announce that the University of Delaware, Delaware Technical Community College, Delaware State University and Wilmington University all have said students’ scores on the state’s new 11th grade Smarter Assessments are a good measure of college readiness and will be accepted in lieu of a separate placement test.
A press release with the full details will be sent to you later today.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Best,
Susan
Susan Keene Haberstroh, MPA, Ed.D.
Chief, Policy and External Affairs
Delaware Department of Education
Townsend Building
401 Federal Street, Suite 2
Dover, DE 19901
susan.haberstroh@doe.k12.de.us
P: 302-735-4035; F:302.739.4654
The Season Of Myths 
Reblogged this on Those In Favor and commented:
The first SBAC test hasn’t been completed, its efficacy has yet to be determined, scores won’t be out until summer, Mark Murphy predicts 70% failure rate for the first few years, yet we’re going to use it to evaluate college and university admissions??
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Here’s how I see it – my daughter, when she gets to that point (long after SBAC is gone, but still), will likely graduate with a semester’s worth of college credits from taking AP courses and exams in a Delaware public high school. So she has to take a “remedial” mathematics course, which will give her an easy A her first semester, because her pig-headed mom insisted on opting her out of the test. Big F-in Deal. We’ll see what happens in the next few months.
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Just FYI, remedial courses do not count towards GPA, but you still have to use your time and money. Depending on the course/school, many remedial courses are just Pass/Fail.
Also, if your daughter is getting the 4 or 5 necessary on the appropriate AP test (and occasionally 3), then she’ll likely be placing out of those courses regardless.
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My son is special needs. How will this help “close the achievement gap”? It’s just another way of widening that gap…
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Thanks for the clarification! I was mainly pointing out that if you weighed the number of craps I give about this test and paid me per ounce, I’d be paying you 😉
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Everyone who values honesty and public education and parental/child rights needs to show up on Wednesday 4/22/15 at Leg Hall to support HB 50 and make the statement that coercive, bullying and poorly conceived and contrived unproven standards will not determine an honest evaluation of all Delaware children’s abilities and accomplishments.
Thank you,
Representative John Kowalko
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If you are interested in going to this committee meeting, what time is it? Where is the meeting? How do we get in?
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It’s on the 22nd. I’m hearing it will be at 2:30pm, but the agenda hasn’t been released yet. It will have to be by tomorrow. But this information is pretty solid. They do have a metal detector to get in, you sign your name on the guest list, show them your id, and go to the meeting. You can even give public comment!
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Thanks! I may have to prepare something just in case!
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So when Voldermort summons, the Death Eaters come out in support… Doesn’t really say much else….
…. except as state schools they will accept state students and waive the pre-placement tests because they will have enough data already…
I don’t see how this changes anything. They still have to take the test; 70% will fail, and those failures will have to take placement tests anyway, even if they did know enough for advanced placement but couldn’t figure what the questions were trying to ask.
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For college- and career-ready assessments to be effective in guiding student course placement decisions, and to reduce the amount of retesting necessary at the college level, states will need to decide upon more than a single college-ready cut score. They should also provide information about the types of first-year college-level coursework that students are prepared to take. For this information to be useful, public colleges and universities will need to adopt more consistent and reliable policies around placement decisions. Otherwise, the inconsistent use of inadequate college course placement tests will continue to be the norm, and students who pass those college- and career-ready assessments will be only a little better off than they were before.
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Shouldn’t we be focused more on why Delware standards are so low that they have to take remedial classes in the first place. How about decreasing class sizes and giving control of assessments back to the teachers who are in a better position of adequately assessing a student. Til then, all parents should opt out to force the state to address the lack of education to our children.
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So for clarity… all DE schools will accept 3<5 SBAC scores as guarantee not to remediate. Several points jump out. 1) SBAC difficulty level poses no threat to schools that weak students might slip through. I wonder if a correlation study was done by DOE to show where previous DCAS scorers would place in smarter comforting higher ed of remediation cut off scores. 2) Ok, so no remediation but schools will still require their placement exam to assign college level start. 3) It is more important to Gov. to invest in a test at such an early stage – beneficial to whom? Obviously, he act in interest on smarter coalition progress rather than DE children. In addition, he sees the executive branch as uncheckable. 4) Second year of ignoring and disrespecting Advanced Placement juniors by squeezing smarter into their spring testing window.
Its as if he can do whatever he wants for whomever he wants. Elected Democrats should be embarrassed of what he has done to the party.
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Oh, great. Let’s make college admission contingent upon the results of an untried, experimental test. Way to go, DE.
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camb888, It’s more about the scores tying into a waiver of taking remedial classes at these colleges after reading the press release. The initial email sent out indicated something else, but this is equally ridiculous. As if Smarter Balanced could be anything more than the failure it is! https://exceptionaldelaware.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/details-about-the-delaware-universities-colleges-using-smarter-balanced-scores/
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The SmarterBalanced Math assessment has been invalidated by SR Education Associates and should not be used for diagnostic, placement, nor policy related decisions: http://mathedconsulting.com. The following collection has additional information and updates (http://bit.ly/testing_testing). And the Seattle/King County NAACP and Education/Social Justice communities held a Press Conference last week that should be watched by all who will be involved with the testing: https://youtu.be/rT3hFSuBAqc?t=6m59s
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Kevin, that ^^^^^ needs a comment rescue and its own post!!!!
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