How have you (or your student) really done on SAT or ACT test prep? Do you know exactly what to focus on before next mock practice test?

We are please to invite you to try theTestGrader, where you can grade, score and get detailed personalized reports for ACT / SAT full tests or individual section reports. In few clicks convert your books / paper based test practice responses in scaled score, points lost by subject area, and detailed performance analysis.

Some time back we created the free ACT test scoring and composite score calculation tool and has written number of article about ACT Scoring process. Continuing on our work, we have automated the full process for ACT and SAT scoring, grading, composite score calculation, and most importantly Point Lost analysis at theTestGrader.com.

Grade individual section and get same detailed analysis as full test. See the sample ACT test section report which is similar to full ACT or SAT report.

theTestGrader is currently supporting individual section reporting for 10 SAT tests from the latest book by CollegeBoard and 3 ACT tests from the Real ACT Prep guide.

It’s free during the beta phase. So, create reports for your student, or have your students generate their reports directly. The process is simple:

1. Go to http://www.thetestgrader.com and see the demo
2. Select appropriate exam, test #, and section
3. Transfer responses on online bubblesheet
4. Get score and download report in PDF format

While still in Beta, you may see issues. We hope theTestGrader will save time for tutors and students. If you have any suggestions, request for additional tests, or any other feedback, please reach out to us.

Also, majority of time students practice individual sections of tests. Few full length tests are completed in one sitting.

Continuing on our work on ACT Score calculator and Performance analysis we are starting the alpha testing of “section reports” for ACT and SAT tests. See the final output sample ACT Test Section Report, and SAT Test Section Report. Now compare is with full length SAT / ACT test report.

We believe this will help students and tutors to eliminate some of the cumbersome work give them more insight and time to focus their effort on real learning.

Using new features, Students and tutors who are using regular ACT books will be able to enter their question responses in a simple bubble sheet like web page. The basic flow will be:

• Select the book, test and section
• Enter the responses on bubble sheet
• Enter your name (optionally login)
• Get the scoring and the performance report.

Below are few screen shots and flow chart of what is about to come live in next few weeks.

If you are interested in trying out the Alpha Service please send us an email via our contact form and we will send you instruction how to access it.

Socrato Team

UPDATE
Looking for easy grading, scoring, and reporting tool for ACT and SAT – Check out our post on theTestGrader where in few clicks you can grade, score, and get personalized report for individual sections of test.

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 to practice and fill out the bubble sheets on paper; and use Socrato’s ACT Diagnostic Assessment Service to create the best ACT diagnostic analysis.

After paper based practice, in a few clicks tutors or students can enter student test practice responses (bubble sheet data) into Socrato using one of our convenient data entry options: directly enter as bubble sheet (student or tutor), enter in bulk mode, or load files automatically generated via a bubble sheet scanner.

Once done, within seconds the Socrato online service does the grading, scaling, scoring and detailed analysis. This service takes our previous work on our Free ACT test analysis and scoring tool further. It removes all complexities of ACT test scoring, ACT composite score calculation etc. The automatically generated reports can be printed, emailed or viewed online. The ACT report is now on par with our highly regarded SAT diagnostic service.

The diagnostic analysis is one of the best. It covers:

• Full history of student progress, detailed grading, scoring, scaling, and even the point cost analysis in each subject area
• Skills, difficulty level, subject area content analysis, and question responses detail
• Socrato analysis goes “beyond scores” and analyzes student test taking tendencies and behavior

This analysis leads to personalized, concrete recommendations, and performance improvement in less time. You can download the sample diagnostic report for the ACT test for an Individual student here.

Tutors can look online or download detailed diagnostic reports for an individual student to help them one-on-one, or look at a class/group as a whole to optimize the strategy and instruction plan for the most optimal outcome. The entire process is very similar to Socrato’s SAT, MCAS, and other exam assessment offerings. To see how Socrato generates one of the best diagnostic assessments for the ACT, SAT and other tests see the video here.

By combining the best of two – paper / pencil for practice, and computers to do the analysis, Socrato saves time, improves student results, and allows tutors / students to focus effort on instruction and learning.

Socrato allows for branding of reports and customization of learning analytics to meet the specific needs and styles of our customers. If you are interested in learning more about this service please contact us.

UPDATE
Looking for easy grading, scoring, and reporting tool for ACT and SAT – Check out our post on theTestGrader where in few clicks you can grade, score, and get personalized report for individual sections of test.

“Socrato: The Future of Test Prep?” by Matt Fellows

“Socrato has the potential to strip standardized tests of their mysterious, intimidating power, and turn them into more helpful learning tools…”

Read More

Because we frequently receive inquires for ACT Diagnostic Analysis and Reporting, we’ve decided to make the ACT the next test we support as part of our “Companion Series” diagnostic reporting suite.  We know that tutors and students have to deal with the drawn-out scoring process for each ACT test. For experienced tutors, scoring student practice tests has become second nature, but it’s still not straight forward.

The entire scoring and scaling process is scattered across 13 pages for each test in the official guide. If you step back, and look at the entire process of scoring the ACT, it reminds me of filling out an annual tax return.

While you wait for us to incorporate the ACT into Socrato as a simple, efficient, and more effective tool, we thought we’d provide a barebones excel tool in the meantime.

This simple spreadsheet “ACT Scoring Tool” does not reduce the effort by much (as you still have to do the majority of manual lookups and calculations) but it does add value. The spreadsheet tool

• Simplifies the process of capturing the data. All calculations and results are captured on 1 page – instead of 7.
• Does some of the calculations and validations (in your manual worksheet process there is no way to know if you missed the questions in your count)
• Does some interesting and baseline analysis – e.g. What is the point impact of each wrong / missed question
• Makes data visual by automatically generating graphs

Since we’re in the midst of incorporating the ACT into Socrato, please send along any suggestions and feature requests.  Our ultimate vision is to create the best diagnostic analysis for the ACT.  To see how the process will work, watch the Socrato Overview video. If you want to know what the diagnostic analysis will look like, see the equivalent SAT Diagnostic analysis report.

If you are a Tutor and need to do the calculations for an ACT assessment test again and again, drop us an email at info@socrato.com and we will be happy to send you a copy of the current tool for free. All we expect in return is some feedback and encouragement.
Thanks

While working with a number of teachers and tutors, we noticed that many of them create their “binders” (a set of favorite questions, tests, and other materials such as reading passages) in real life, which they often share with others by photocopying. The binders contain a collection of their best material with lots of thought put in. We noticed a similar usage pattern in Socrato where many teachers collect their special questions and content, aligned with particular topic areas, or to help students with certain needs.

So taking a cue from Twitter, we just released features that allow a user (teacher or tutor) to follow other users (teachers and tutors). Whenever the “followed” user shares public material they have created, the “follower” will be notified. This way a teacher can assemble a content set, and all of their followers can reuse and collaborate on that material. Each individual user has privacy controls on how much of their profile and content is visible to other users.

Last night we released the “follow” feature in Socrato. Let us know what you think.

Read the article by Sally Holland at CNN.

Mitchell D. Chester, Ed.D.
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education

Dear Commissioner Chester,

I work with a number of schools helping them review MCAS data and results. Thank you for shortening the turnaround time for MCAS results for schools, and for shortening the test periods.  Schools will greatly benefit from the increased analysis and planning window you have created.  However, the new policy regarding the release of only a partial set of questions greatly impacts the ability of teachers and schools to review those MCAS results in a meaningful way.

Having a report showing only strand information puts teachers at a big disadvantage. It is very difficult without the actual questions to see where students are having difficulty.  For example, the strand information does not indicate whether a math question is a whisker plot, a line graph, or a stem and leaf plot; students may have done well on one but not another.

ELA questions are even more problematic. The strand indicators are almost meaningless (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc.) because they don’t tie back to student skills, such as “finding evidence”, or “making inferences” about the passages.  When the questions and answers are released and provided to the teachers, these interpretations can be made easily; without the questions, it is almost not worth looking at the English MCAS results.  While it is not necessary to release all the reading passages, the questions and answers are fundamental to proper analysis.

Being able to see the question and answer content also allows teachers to see which answers the students indicated, showing the answer response patterns of their classes.  Many times students choose the same wrong answer, showing that they misunderstand a concept in the same way.  For example, in math when calculating an expression with absolute value operations and squaring, a number of students might calculate the square correctly, but not get the proper sign.  Again, without access to the questions, this type of inference is impossible.

Release of test items is critical for teachers to conduct a meaningful analysis, and to help their students make real progress.  While it may allow for shortening the test period, and perhaps save money in a time of state budget scarcity, it is a big step backward for MCAS.

I am sure you have considered other options, but I implore you to look more carefully.  I am confident there are a set schools that would allow future questions to be field tested, perhaps in an interim assessment in November.  Such an approach could provide a win-win situation.  Schools who participate in the interim assessment program would get better information about student progress before the spring exams, and the entire community would benefit from the release of the common test items from the March and May assessments.

I urge you to support schools and teachers by reversing the new policy that limits the release of test items.

Warm regards,

Mike Oates

mfoates@gmail.com

Major updates were done in learning analytic and reporting area. Key high lights include:

• Teachers or tutors can create custom reports for group of students.
• Assessment data can be analyzed by teacher defined parameters and criteria. Example, school staff can look at the performance of a class by race, gender, lunch code or any other parameters they wish to define. This is already providing interesting insights to our current users.
• Learning data analytics is very tightly connected with learning content. Teacher can assemble relevant learning content just by clicking on the standards link in various reports.
• Question distribution report now shows the list of students for each response. 

In addition, number of bug fixes were made and usability issue where resolved.

As always, thank you all for your feedback. If you run into any issues please drop us an email or leave a comment.

As we started working on one off requests, we decided to put the entire material in a simple to use spreadsheet so it can benefit as many teachers and tutors as possible. To use the spreadsheet and see this for yourself click on the MCAS Question and Content Analysis-v2.xls in your browser. In order for this to work, you will need Microsoft Excel (part of MS Office suite).

Save the spreadsheet on your local drive, open the spreadsheet and click on the “MCAS-TestAnalysis” Tab.

On this tab make the selection for various choices in the drop down boxes on the upper left:

• Grade level  (Row 3 )
• Year published (Row 4)
• Test Name (Row 5)

You can further refine the data on Row 8 by filtering

• Subject name
• Topics name
• Standard name

By default the report shows data for grade 6 but you can change that in Row 3 by making other selection.

The question distribution report will show as you make selection changes. I hope you will find this useful. Few teachers are using this data to create a series of formative assessments that focus on the highest frequency questions for each strand.

If you have any feedback or comments please let us know. Also, feel free to pass this along to any other teachers who you think will find it useful.

In the future we will try to hook this report into Socrato as a feature so you will have access without Excel. For more interesting content and learning data analysis checkout www.socrato.com or contact us to setup a demo.

Best Regards,
-Raju

UPDATE – uploaded the new version of excel file – this has the full description of each standard.