Nome Schools Interim Superintendent Shawn Arnold says for educators in Alaska, 2015 has been called the “triad year”—with three major state-wide updates soon to be implemented: new instructional standards, new educator evaluations, and new state assessments.
At last night’s meeting of the Nome Board of Education, Janeen Sullivan gave an overview of Alaska Measures of Progress, the new state test known as “AMP.” AMP testing will entirely replace the Standards Based Assessment starting this year for all subjects except science. Sullivan says AMP is a custom assessment for Alaska, reviewed by in-state teachers.
“But Alaska teachers also designed some of the features, the scoring, and the reporting of the test and wrote the passages that kids read for the English Language Arts section, so there’s more involvement by Alaska,” said Sullivan.
Calling AMP a more rigorous and focused test, Sullivan says instead of solely measuring proficiency, the test will reflect progress and growth. It’s also the state’s first computer-based assessment.
“That allows some technology enhanced items where kids are dropping and dragging things—having different tools online so it’s more interactive and hopefully more engaging,” she said.
While that interactive new approach may be compelling for students, it comes with its own set of challenges for rural schools where Internet accessibility is limited and expensive. Nome Schools Technology Director Robin Johnson says AMP is run through a local caching server—not driven directly off the Internet—so it shouldn’t exhaust all of the district’s bandwidth.
“The first kid that downloads a question—we have a server set up that will cache that question locally so the second kid doesn’t have to go off the Internet to get it or any kids after that,” said Johnson. “So they’re all configured to use that and it should help with bandwidth and speed.”
Since it’s a completely new procedure, the state has a few dry runs built into the system. Technology practice tests are available now for students to explore the tools and online platform in advance. Short assessments called “testlets,” will be reflective of AMP content. And on January 29th the state is sponsoring a trial run to simulate the actual test, so the state and individual districts can troubleshoot and figure out what issues they’re likely to face on test day. Sullivan says while she expects some complications, Nome Schools will probably fare better than most.
“We’re in a lot better shape than a number of districts, and I’m very thankful we’re single-site so we can drive. We’re not trying to fly around and fly tech people everywhere to get things set up so we’ve got a number of advantages,” said Sullivan.
Since AMP is a completely different test than past assessments, Interim Superintendent Arnold says the state expects to see a dip in scores across the board for the first year. Eventually though, it’s expected that AMP will become a ‘benchmark’ exam given three times each year.
