CBT Readiness Review Process
The Purpose the CBT Readiness Review Process
The Common Core State Standards Initiative promises to bring sweeping changes to how students learn and teachers teach. The curriculum-based aspects of the Common Core relate to providing students with opportunities to meet world-class standards for developing thinking, learning, and creativity skills. For teachers, the work to implement and create the learning environments necessary for meeting the standards brings to the fore issues of moving curriculum, instruction, and assessment fully into the 21st century. Perhaps nowhere is this movement more obvious than in the fact that the new Common Core assessments scheduled to replace existing state-standardized tests starting in SY2014 will fully utilize computer-based testing (CBT). CBT will allow states, districts, teachers, parents, and of course students to quickly and efficiently access assessment data and to thereby quickly fine-tune learning in a way that is not possible with traditional paper and pencil tests.
Just as the Common Core challenges teachers to develop and deploy new instructional practices to meet new standards, the CBT component of the Common Core challenges districts to deploy a sufficient level of technology infrastructure to support the new assessments. In fact, this infrastructure is largely what most districts have been aiming for in terms of student access to instructional technology for day-to-day use. Likewise, the intense network bandwidth and nearly one-to-one student to device ratios required for Common Core testing are key components of a 21st century learning environment. Measuring and assessing your infrastructure’s ability to support CBT is also a productive activity for addressing broader teaching and learning initiatives.
In New York, the new computer-based Common Core assessments are commonly
referred to as PARCC assessments.
The acronym reflects NY’s a membership in the Partnership for Assessment
of Readiness for the Common Core, the 18 state consortium working to
implement the Common Core assessments of college and career readiness.
To assist in the implementation process, PARCC has published a set of
guidelines detailing the technology requirements related to its assessments.
Through the development of this CBT readiness review process, LHRIC has
supplemented the PARCC materials so as to help districts understand the
requirements and then to conduct the necessary tests to determine the
full extent of district readiness. The review process provides resources
for districts to aggregate and describe what they need to reach readiness.
This description is useful in working with the funding agents and vendors
that will ultimately move districts to acquire a better understanding
of what is required to support CBT. .
Readiness Review Components
The Lower Hudson Regional Information Center (LHRIC) and Sun Associates in partnership with your Regional Information Center (RIC) and BOCES has created the CBT Readiness Review Process. This process contains the following components:
- Readiness Checklist -- Districts should complete this checklist that prepares the district for engaging in the LHRIC CBT Readiness Review process.
- Readiness Responsibility Worksheet – This simple worksheet helps districts assign responsibility for various aspects of readiness preparation and to create a timeline for the readiness review process.
- PARCC Technology Guidelines – PARCC has prepared a set of guidelines that describe the hardware, software, and network bandwidth necessary to administer the assessments to the level of the student desktop. These guidelines form the basic infrastructure readiness indicators for the Readiness Review process.
- PARCC Capacity Planning Tool – PARCC has created an interactive tool that takes district data on guideline-compliant devices, bandwidth, and testing conditions (days, numbers of students, etc.) and then compares this data to the PARCC Guidelines. The result of this comparison is a quantitative report on device and bandwidth adequacy.
- CBT Other Factors Guide – LHRIC has created a set of guidelines for describing and addressing the issues related to staffing, scheduling, etc. necessary for administering the assessments.
- District Readiness Gap Analysis Report – This LHRIC-created report template aggregates and summarizes the data that flows from the Capacity Planning Tool and Human Factors Guide. Completing this template-driven report provides districts with a way to organize and present their data findings (gaps) in a “proposal” that goes to Boards/district administrators and explains what a district needs to do to reach full readiness.
These components are intended to be used, and will be most effective, within the context of technical support from your RIC or BOCES.
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