Success Stories: Columbine Elementary School

Across the country and during the past few years, ATI has witnessed data-verified student improvement among Galileo K-12 Online users. We have spoken with a variety of educators in districts and in individual schools who are achieving success. We wanted to learn more about their strategies and the challenges faced in making changes that led to improvements that can be documented through state-level test performance.

We interviewed the staff at Columbine Elementary School within the St. Vrain Valley School District in Longmont, Colorado, after discovering that the percent of students scoring at or above proficient on the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) increased 14 percentage points in math and 11 percentage points in reading/English language arts. This impressive growth is attributed to the hands-on approach to leadership by Columbine's Principal, Eddie Cloke.

Understanding the benefits of Galileo K-12 Online, and with District support, Mr. Cloke began spending instructional time with students and tracked their progress using the tools within Galileo. After gathering and reviewing the results of these efforts, Mr. Cloke states that the data revealed "huge, huge gains," in the students' learning. He shared the hands-on approach and results with his staff and they jumped on board. The school continues to see improvement in student scores.

To learn more about Columbine Elementary School’s success story, click here.

To read more stories of success, click here.

Testing Arrays: Part of ATI’s Comprehensive Assessment System

Effective data-driven educational decision-making requires a variety of assessment tools. These tools must be planned and delivered in a comprehensive and integrated approach if teachers and administrators are to have the sort of complete picture of student achievement that is needed to plan instruction.

Testing Arrays are one of the tools in the Galileo technology platform that support the examination of student learning from a comprehensive viewpoint. The title may sound rather “techie,” but the benefits are pretty clear and easy to see. In short, tests don’t have to be delivered as a single task that must be completed in one or two sittings in order to yield valid and reliable results. Testing Array provides a reliable and valid assessment utilizing different assessments administered over multiple occasions. Rather than a single 40-item benchmark, districts might elect to administer four tests with 10 items each. The impact on instruction may be minimized without having to settle for poor reliability. This sort of benefit is easy to see when looking at the evaluation of a skill such as reading proficiency in young students. Short assessments might be designed to evaluate letter naming, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and other capabilities. Each of the assessments in a testing array may be scheduled, administered, and scored independently. The level of flexibility provided by testing arrays also makes it easier for teachers to include a wider range of student work in determining a final score for a student. An assessment that a child has taken in two or three weeks ago might be scored with a recently completed quiz to produce a more current picture of their learning.

There are a number of ways to learn first-hand about Testing Array benefits or Galileo K-12 Online. You can:

• visit the Assessment Technology Incorporated website (ati-online.com)
• participate in an online overview by registering either through the website or by calling 1.877.442.5453 to speak with a Field Services Coordinator
• visit us at the Missouri School Boards' Association (MSBA) in cooperation with Missouri Association of School Administrators (MASA) Annual Conference September 30 through October 1 at the Tan-Tar-A Resort in Osage Beach, Missouri.
  

We look forward to chatting with you online and at events.