All Aboard! The Full Switch to the New Galileo K-12 Student-Parent Center is Slated for July 3

On July 3, the Galileo transition from the classic view to the new K-12 Student-Parent Center will be fully completed. We encourage you to get an even earlier start by taking a moment now to switch over to the new view today and immediately enjoy the benefits it provides. Explore the sleek new interface designed to easily communicate information between students and teachers and between teachers and parents. Communications to students and parents can focus on curriculum and instruction including scheduled lessons and assignments, on assessments and assessment results, and on instructional resources for home use. Experience for yourself the enhanced Dashboard, user-friendly icons, responsive design accommodating use on various screen sizes, search capabilities, and the integration of Google Translate.

Learn how easy it is to switch to the new K-12 Student-Parent Center today. If you have any questions, contact our friendly Field Services Coordinators to answer any questions.

Several Options Offered in the Galileo Comprehensive Assessment System

Galileo K-12 Online offers a full range of assessments with actionable reporting and school-comparison capability. The Galileo comprehensive assessment system provides clients with both prebuilt and customized assessment options. The prebuilt component includes high quality benchmark and formative assessments, pretests and posttests, placement tests, universal screeners, interim and end of course examinations, summative assessments, and multi-stage computerized adaptive tests. The customized assessment component in Galileo provides districts/charters the capability to create a wide variety of customized standards-aligned assessments reflective of district curriculums/ pacing guides. Users may also import assessments made outside of Galileo with Automated Scoring Key (ASK) technology. Plus, districts/charters may prepare students for statewide assessments by including, in any online test, technology enhanced (TE) items representative of those likely to be encountered on statewide assessments.

A summary of the Galileo comprehensive assessment system:

• Comprehensive Blueprint Assessment Series (CBAS) 
• Technology Enhanced  Early Literacy and Math Series (TE EL and TE EM) 
• Comprehensive Pretests/Posttests 
• Instructional Effectiveness Pretests/Posttests 
• Multi-Stage Computerized Adaptive Tests (CAT)
• Screening Assessments 
• Placement Assessments 
• Pre-built Writing Prompt Assessments
• Formative Assessment Series and Progress Monitoring Assessments 
• Customized district-wide assessments 
• Customized school-wide and classroom assessments 

Learn more about Galileo assessments and take a moment to watch the webinar, “Seeing the Big Picture with Galileo’s Comprehensive Assessment System.” It gives insight into the different components of the Galileo comprehensive assessment system and addresses the following basic questions about an assessment system: 

• What is the Galileo comprehensive assessment system?
• What makes a benchmark series comprehensive?
• How do teachers use the data on student performance including standards mastery, growth, and risk that is generated through and available in Galileo?
• What tools does Galileo offer to incorporate student performance data into measures of instructional effectiveness? 

View the Webinar 

Keeping it Simple with Galileo Assessments

It’s summer again, and that means many districts are in the thick of planning for next year’s assessments and maybe looking closer at all that Galileo has to offer, too. And since Galileo is constantly being refreshed, revitalized, and rejuvenated with updates, upgrades, and even new features, there’s a lot to explore, including technology enhanced (TE) items, digital curricula, and of course all the usual enhancements to learning that have made Galileo the stalwart resource that it has been for many years. Summer is a great time for teachers and administrators to get better acquainted with the various reports and test creation platforms that are so helpful to teachers who are guiding student learning. As an ATI Educational Management Services Coordinator, I often hear from school districts who are clearly not getting the most out of what Galileo can do. A great way to peruse the untapped possibilities is to meander through the help files in Galileo, where there is a wealth of useful and easy-to-find information about a myriad of relevant topics—reports, digital curriculum, scheduling, scoring, printing, the Dashboard, student records, data setup, user accounts, etc., etc.—virtually everything except how to tie your shoes, and yes, including assessment planning.  

As one who works exclusively with districts that design their own assessments using the Galileo tools, benchmark assessment planning is the focus of my time at this point in the year. Fortunately, assessment planning doesn’t require participation of a rocket scientist. My advice is to keep a couple basic principles in mind:  keep it simple, and let the system work for you. If there is not a strong reason to get fancy with your testing, then don’t! You’ll be spinning your wheels just to end up at the same place you would be if you let the ship fly on autopilot. What do I mean? Well, ATI has a series of ready-to use comprehensive assessments and a whole system built around them to provide reliable growth and achievement data that teachers can use to quickly see and target areas of student weakness. A good standard approach is a pretest, 1 to 3 mid-year benchmarks, and a posttest. And while certainly it is true that we don’t want to over-burden and discourage students with comprehensive tests that repeatedly test them on areas where they have not yet received instruction, ATI’s comprehensive pre- and posttests can be combined with quarterly or other periodic curriculum-aligned assessments designed by the district to effectively glean both the information on annual performance that administrators want to see, and the information on student progress that teachers need to support their vital and central role in the educational process. 

In Galileo’s Assessment Planner, the districts that choose to design their own tests can select the standards desired for each curriculum-aligned test and the number of items needed for each standard. We do the rest! Whenever questions come up, ATI’s trained and experienced staff is here to offer guidance and support. Keep in mind, the Test Review phase of test construction is your opportunity to tweak the particular items on a test, not a license to turn it inside out. Why? Because the drafts we deliver have been carefully balanced and designed to provide the best, most reliable data that can be provided within the confines of the particular blueprint; too many changes to the test carry the possibility of unknowingly upsetting that balance and causing that reliability to drift. So, keep it simple, enjoy your summer, and let Galileo work for you.   

Contributed by
Ben Tucker,  Educational Management System Coordinator

Preview the Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform

Now is your chance to get a look at the Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform by viewing the recently recorded webinar: New Ways to Look at Curriculum Using the Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform. The platform provides an innovative, practical, and dynamic solution for seamlessly integrating standards-based differentiated instruction, comprehensive, reliable, and valid assessment, as well as actionable Dashboard reporting to promote learning. As a first of its kind, the platform makes it possible to easily integrate existing curriculum content, develop new curriculum content, and modify curriculums as needed. In addition to these benefits, the platform also offers districts/charters the following advantages. 

• real-time feedback for both teachers and students; 
• rapid access to curriculum and units via Dashboards;  
• practical management of communications between teachers and students as well as between teachers and parents through the K-12 Student-Parent Center;
• ample capacity to measure instructional impact; 
• flexible approaches to curriculum that accommodate changes in district/charter needs;
• cost effective methods that reduces the need to purchase traditional textbooks that quickly become outdated; and
• direct connection of essential goals, objectives, and outcomes in a continuous cycle.

View the newly recorded webinar for your glimpse of the technology within the Galileo platform that enables districts/charters to disseminate and manage curriculum, facilitate data-driven instruction, engage students in multi-modal interactive learning, and evaluate curriculum impact on learning outcomes.

View the webinar
Learn more about the benefits of the Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform