DeKalb County students grades 3-11 will be taking TCAP Writing Assessments in February, and DeKalb West eighth graders will take the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests this year.
According to Lisa Cripps, supervisor of instruction for 7th-12th grades for the scholl system, the NAEP test is a continuing and nationally representative assessment of what our nation’s students know and can do. Since NAEP does not report data for individual schools or students, it is not necessary to assess every student in the United States.
A sampling of students from across the United States is used to ensure the test will be representative of the geographical, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of all students.
“This year, DeKalb West School’s eighth grade class was picked to take the NAEP Assessment,” Cripps said. “It was encouraging to see the Nation’s Report Card last year showing Tennessee students grew more from 2011-2013 than students in any other state. We look forward to our amazing students being a part of the NAEP Assessment data in the future.”
Cripps said the TCAP Writing Assessment will be administered in February.
“This year’s TCAP Writing Assessment will be taken by all students in grades 3-11,” she shared. “The MIST online testing process will be taken throughout the month of February. The students will read two informational texts and complete a writing task in response to a prompt/or prompts. The following will be our grade level testing windows:
Feb. 2-6: grades 3, 6, and 9; Feb. 9-13; grades 4, 7, and 10; Feb. 16-20: grades 5 and 11; Feb. 23-27: grade 8.
Per legislation passed by the General Assembly, the 2015 TCAP Writing Assessment will be required in all grades 3-11 in the 2014-15 school year. The 2015 Writing Assessment will be similar to last year.
The test will be administered online to all students on the MIST platform except for students that require Braille test forms.
All students in Grades 3-11 will read two written texts, otherwise known as stimulus passages. No multimedia texts will be included. Like last year, written texts will include social studies or science topics in order to demonstrate the possible range of informational reading. Text prompts will not require background information. Scoring will not privilege prior knowledge about the topic.
Texts will be chosen for a variety of factors, including quality, style, and subject matter, and will be reviewed by teachers for sensitivity. All texts will be authentic passages from previously published sources or well-known authors. All texts will be appropriately complex for the given grade/band as determined by the staircase of complexity in Tennessee’s English Language Arts/Literacy standards (in the case of a grade band such as 4-5, texts will be aligned to the middle of the complexity range between the two grades). Text complexity will be determined using quantitative and qualitative factors. More information about text complexity is available here.
Students in Grades 3-5 will read two texts and write one essay:
•One prose constructed response essay about both texts. The essay will be either informational/explanatory or opinion.
Students in Grades 6-11 will read two texts and write two essays:
•The first prose constructed response essay will be about the first text and will be informational/explanatory.
•The second prose constructed response essay will be an argument about both texts.
All students in grades 3 through 5 will have a ninety (90) minute time limit. Teachers may institute a break of 5–15 minutes, at their discretion. All students in grades 6 through 11 will have a one hundred twenty (120) minute time limit. Teachers may institute a break of 5–30 minutes, at their discretion. These time limits must be observed.
The following tools will be provided to all students:
•Pencil (provided by proctor)
•Blank scratch paper (provided by proctor)
•Highlighter (MIST)
•Notepad: provides a space for students to type notes while reading passages (MIST)
•Flag items for review (MIST)
•Zoom in/out (MIST)
•Writing process tools including bold, underline, copy, cut, and paste (MIST) – Note: students may copy, cut and paste within their written response, but not from the reading passage
•Spell check
The 2015 TCAP Writing Assessment will be centrally scored by Measurement Inc. for all grades, 3-11. The scoring process is robust and is driven by Tennessee students and educators.
Districts will receive individual performance reports that summarize student performance on a rolling basis from early May to early June 2015.
The 2015 TCAP Writing Assessment will have no effect upon district or school level accountability. The scores will not be factored into students’ grades, teacher value-added scores and should not be used for teacher evaluation purposes.
