HumRRO’s education staff is proactively preparing to respond to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) currently being considered for reauthorization. Stakeholders are predicting what the final legislation will include, with most expecting to see annual testing in English language arts and mathematics as well as continued testing in science within selected grades. Disaggregated scores for school accountability will likely continue, as will school turnaround initiatives.
Since the late 1990s, HumRRO has supported State Departments of Education in all of these areas. Following the passage of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), this support has included conducting studies to substantiate states’ assessment and accountability systems and peer review submissions. We are paying close attention to proposed reauthorization requirements so that we are prepared to support states for either a continuation of the current NCLB guidance or a revised ESEA.
To support current ESEA guidance, our teams routinely:
- Conduct validity investigations for statewide assessments, including alternate assessments for students with disabilities
- Analyze assessment data for evidence of fairness
- Conduct alignment studies and standard setting procedures using methodologies that support regular static assessments, alternate assessments, and Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT)
- Develop school turnaround plans and evaluations
- Analyze data to support teacher evaluation systems
- Observe and evaluate test administrations
- Calculate Annual Yearly Progress and value added scores
- Evaluate the impact of a variety of testing programs on student achievement
- Advise states on complex psychometric and accountability issues
- Calculate classification accuracy indices using a unique HumRRO approach
- Minimize instances where state goals and federal requirements are in conflict
- Investigate and evaluate test disruptions and anomalous student and school data
- Scale and equate test data, including the development and maintenance of vertical scales
- Provide psychometric quality assurance steps to ensure score accuracy and cross-form comparability
Because we are highly adaptable and nimble, we can skillfully navigate the complex data systems and psychometric processing required by different states. We routinely use a variety of different statistical programs, including R and SAS, and several different scaling and equating programs such as IRT-Pro, flexMIRT, Multilog, PARSCALE and Winsteps.
We are prepared to continue to support states as they implement assessments and accountability systems, irrespective of whether that support falls under current NCLB guidance or a new ESEA.
