Yesterday at the Delaware State Board of Education meeting, Dr. Carolyn Lazar with the Office of Assessment at the Delaware Department of Education gave a presentation on state assessment results but did not release any Smarter Balanced Assessment results. This presentation also included school and district proficiency information, which can be found on this page. The only reason I didn’t Scribd them is because they are stamped “embargoed” which I find hysterical because they are putting them on a public website!
https://www.scribd.com/doc/275482146/Doe-Assessment-Presentation-82015
These DCAS results are mixed. For regular students, they went down from last year in Science and Social Studies. For severely cognitively impaired students, who take the DCAS-Alt tests, the results are up and down depending on the grade. Overall, with the exception of 7th and 9th grade, these types of students appear to be reading better, but social studies, science and math are showing a downward trend compared to last year.
This also went into the DOE’s five-year plan for state assessment and the release of Smarter Balanced scores in the coming month. I absolutely love how they specifically mention who they met with to discuss this roll-out, but FAIL to mention their one-on-one meetings with members of the General Assembly. Not one mention of legislators at all. They know this information is already public, so why would they omit this? If the DOE wants to convey clear communication with parents and community members about this test, than they should make public all contracts, addendums, emails associated with this test, and the exact date they got the results back. No parent will ever take this Department seriously if they continue this embargo and withholding information from the general public.
As for Senate Joint Resolution #2, the assessment inventory, when can we expect to see who is on this task force? Who picks the members? We can’t forget, Lindsey O’Mara who is the Education Policy Advisor for Governor Markell, publicly stated Smarter Balanced can be included in assessments up for discussion on this task force!
Once again Delaware Parents: REFUSE THE TEST DELAWARE starts NOW! And Parent Freak-Out 2015 begins the moment Smarter Balanced results are made public!
The Season Of Myths 