Española School District Superintendent Danny Trujillo is hoping to cut down on the number of tests students in the District would have to take.
If Trujillo’s wish comes true, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, the Measure of Academic Progress and the Brigance would all be replaced with the one exam known as the Star assessment.
“I would like to petition the state to do away with the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) assessment and we would do away with the MAPs assessment, and we would do away with the Brigance assessment, which is for special ed, and just use one assessment, and that would be the Star assessment, that we purchased through Renaissance,” Trujillo said. “If we could do that, we could eliminate three tests and triple the amount of time for our kids and just do one assessment.”
Trujillo makes the point there is nothing inherently flawed with any of the assessments the District is currently using, but having the three different tests is redundant.
“They’re all good assessments. It’s just that the DIBELS is specific to kindergarten, first, second and third grade. The DIBELS can give you a diagnostic assessment, it’s good. The Brigance assessment is for special education students and then the MAPs is also K-12 — short cycle assessments,” Trujillo said. “What I like about the Star assessments, it’s K-12, and it gives you the same indicators, the same diagnostic assessment that the other three gives you. So I really see layers.”
By eliminating three exams, Trujillo feels that teachers and administrators can still get a good sense of students’ skill levels.
“We have a choice on the short cycle assessments, which is the MAPs, and there’s four different tests out there that we have a choice from. The Star assessment is one of those choices, Discovery is the other one and the other one is Riverside, so we have four choices,” Trujillo said. “And the Brigance is something that we do over and above for special education students, which we shouldn’t do, so can you see how we are streamlining? One assessment, K-12, to get us the same data.”
The only exceptions are the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills and the Measure of Academic Progress. These assessments are needed if the District is going to apply for a program that specializes in tests for kindergarten to third grade. That is the reason the Superintendent has to petition the state to eliminate that test.
According to the dibels.org website, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills is a set of procedures and measures that can test the literacy acquisition skills of students starting in kindergarten.
They are a series of short, one-minute tests that determine the progress and development of literacy and reading in elementary school students.
The Measure of Academic Progress exams test whether a student has learned the material that has been taught over a period of time and provides teachers with a measure of what skills a particular student needs assistance with.
The Brigance assessment, used for special needs children, usually in the prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade, is a test that compares each child’s results with others who have taken the exam in a variety of subject areas such as language development, science, math and motor skills.
Just like the Measure of Academic Progress, the Star assessments measure and track students’ academic development over the course of an academic year. The Star can be used to determine if a student has learned all of the relevant material at a grade level or, if the tests are given in shorter periods, can measure if the additional assistance a teacher is giving is effective for those who are having trouble with a particular subject. The assessment is a computer adaptive test, which means that questions get progressively more difficult as the student answers more questions correctly. There are three different Star exams, one in math, reading and early literacy.
According to the website Renaissance Learning, which administers the Star assessment, Star is one of the leading cloud-based teaching, assessment and learning solutions program in the business. The company has customers in one-third of schools in the United States and in more than 60 countries world wide.