How the Common Core Stacks Up Against State Standards

On July 21, 2010, in Assessment, Massachusetts, common core, by Prashant Kaw
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Today the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education agreed to adopt the Common Core Standards for state standardized testing. In a 9-0 vote, Massachusetts became the 28th state in the U.S. to approve the new national standard and another 12 should follow suite by the Fall. In a couple of years the MCAS exam [...]

 

High Scores for Brooklyn School Students Despite Poverty

On April 30, 2010, in Assessment, Education, Teaching, Tutoring, by Prashant Kaw
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Earlier this week the New York Times ran an eye-opening article about students from the Beacon School of Excellence in Brooklyn. Despite their poverty these young fourth graders scored higher on their standardized tests than students in neighboring schools with more resources and affluent backgrounds. This is not a story about underdogs and rich versus [...]

 

Announcing – ACT Test Diagnostic Assessment for Tutoring Centers – Better Results in Less Time

On January 6, 2010, in ACT, Announcements, Assessment, Homepage, In The News, Tutoring, by Raju Gupta
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We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of ACT Test Diagnostic Assessments and Reports for tutoring centers. Students and tutors who use traditional books, paper / pencil to practice and prepare for the ACT exam can now get the best of two worlds. Work with traditional printed books like Real ACT Test Prep Guide [...]

 

ACT test score and composite score calculator simplifies ACT test preparation for tutors and students.

On December 22, 2009, in ACT, Assessment, General, Tutoring, by Raju Gupta
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UPDATE: There is an online version of this tool available for free at Bubblesheetgrader.com Tutors who teach ACT exam prep and Students who are preparing for the ACT exam, feel the pain of ACT test grading, scoring, and scaling. The process requires reasonable manual effort which is prone to error, and is time away from [...]

 

New Feature — Tutors and teachers can directly initiate a test session for a student

On December 21, 2009, in Assessment, General, System, by Raju Gupta
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In addition to the many other methods of conducting test sessions or importing student responses, Socrato now allows tutors and teachers to directly initiate a test session as one of their students. The responses can be entered question by question, or in “bubble sheet” mode.  For large classes, tutors can still import from excel files, [...]

 

End of “Cut and Paste” to create custom assessments and worksheets for state standardized tests

On June 29, 2009, in Assessment, Content, Teaching, by Raju Gupta
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A good article by Bailey on how to leverage MCAS material to supplement classroom or home instruction. Teachers and tutors can leverage any state standardized test material, or even National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) material. After each assessment, NAEP releases dozens of sample questions to the public—more than 2,000 questions are currently available to [...]

 

Interesting articles on Educational data analysis, usage and access

On June 19, 2009, in Assessment, Education, Intelligence, Teaching, by Raju Gupta
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How Data analysis is helping raise performance – story covers both good and the bad Data-Driven Schools See Rising Scores – WSJ.com Educational data is in abundance – but not in very useful state. Education Week: Data, Data Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Use  Impact of providing detailed and real time access to student [...]

 

Analysis of previous year MCAS Tests – how many Questions per standard area?

On March 26, 2009, in Assessment, Homepage, Intelligence, Resources, by Socrato!
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With the MCAS season underway and teachers trying to help students, we received a few requests to get insight into how the questions are distributed across the learning standards. Or, how many questions are allocated to each standard area in a given year or grade level? Or, Do you have the frequency analysis of questions [...]

 

Future of educational assessment and student data

On September 3, 2008, in Assessment, Education, by Socrato!
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In an interesting article from Dr. Mostafa Mehrabani – McGraw Hill Assessment and Reporting President, he shares his thoughts about the future of educational assessment and reporting. Looking at the trends, I believe the underlying shift in education (and the impact of technology on it) is going to be bigger than Dr. Mostafa’s article projects. [...]