Experience the Ways the Galileo Comprehensive Assessment System Promotes Student Learning—Complimentary Trial Available Now

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Assessment is a critical part of effective instruction. Research has shown that educators who implement reliable and valid assessments to guide instructional decisions will promote student learning. That’s why ATI’s Galileo K-12 comprehensive assessment system is designed to help inform educational decisions promoting student learning in K-12 math, ELA, science, and other subjects. 

What makes the comprehensive assessment system exceptional?
Let’s begin with its broad array of standards-based, curriculum and pacing guide aligned customized assessments built to client specifications every year. ATI’s in-house Educational Management Services and Research teams, based on your assessment requests, do the assessment construction work for you. The resulting tests will not have accidental duplications across the academic year, will be free of item enemies, will address the Depth of Knowledge levels you specify, and will contain, if you so desire, technology enhanced items.

An additional option provided through the system is a wide variety of high-quality, pre-built assessments. These include benchmark, formative, pretest and posttest, placement, summative, computer adaptive, end-of-course, college prep assessments, plus more.  

ATI’s Secure and Community Item Banks offer 19 item types including constructed response and technology-enhanced items. Each of these item types is designed to engage students in complex thinking to help ensure college and career readiness. Educators can also access more assessment and item choices through the integrated Inspect® and Certica item banks, including Certica’s Navigate Item Bank™.

ATI understands that educators also need to be able to create their own items and assessments quickly and easily. To facilitate this, our intuitive and powerful Test Builder and Item Builder interfaces make creating your own assessments and items a snap. 

Taking a look under the hood—Item Response Theory
Options are great, but to understand what really makes the Galileo comprehensive assessment system so special, we need to take a look under the hood. Powered by ATI research, Galileo takes advantage of Item Response Theory (IRT), and other state-of-the-art statistical analyses to go beyond systems that only report raw scores and percent correct. ATI uses IRT to measure the Developmental Level (DL) of each student. The DL score indicates what students have already mastered and what they are ready to learn next.

Galileo assessments place DL scores and measures of test difficulty on a common scale ensuring that DL score changes reflect growth, not variations in test difficulty. DL scores can then be used to effectively forecast student performance on statewide assessments. Galileo’s innovative Dashboards graphically illustrate this critical information to help educators apply their efforts where needed most—making instruction even more effective.

Try the comprehensive assessment system through a complimentary trial

Contact us to start your complimentary trial of the Galileo comprehensive assessment system. With high-powered data, easy to use tools, and robust item banks, the Galileo comprehensive assessment system is designed to promote success for all students. This is the assessment system you've been searching for. Own your assessment-process and let research work for you, with the Galileo K-12 comprehensive assessment system.   

To learn more about other Galileo services and features, visit us at www.ati-online.com.

Other Resources of Interest:
Customized Galileo Launchpads Drive Efficiency
Multiple Online Testing Tools for Students
Galileo Offers Flexible and Dynamic Reporting Options

Seminar Recap: An Arizona First - The New Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform in Action

Thanks to all who attended, this informative and timely seminar was a big success. The event, which was co-hosted by Chandler Unified School District (CUSD) and ATI, provided a first-hand look at how Arizona educators are taking the lead in utilizing the teacher-friendly innovations of the new Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform. Attendees viewed presentations from the cohosts and engaged in the "Arizona Round Table Discussion" that included education leaders from CUSD, Crane Elementary School District, and Maricopa Unified School District. The round table participants provided their reasons for adopting the new platform along with discussing their experiences, successes, and next steps. 

Access to the presentation materials is now available. We invite you to view and share them with colleagues. For answers to any questions about using the Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform in your district or charter, email us or call 1.800.367.4762.

ATI’s Dr. Sarah Callahan Estrada kicks off the seminar with her presentation, “Technology Supporting Arizona Educators in the Digital Age.” 

CUSD presenters share their experiences of implementing the Galileo Digital Curriculum Platform.

Assessment Based on Instruction or the Benchmark Assessment Series?

Should students be assessed based only on instruction provided during the benchmark period or should all grade-level standards be assessed on each benchmark? This question is asked frequently by ATI clients.

ATI recommends that school districts assess students on standards targeted for instruction if:

· There is an established pacing guide. The school district has a relatively large number of students who will be taking each test. The school district has a pacing guide that includes instruction on all state-tested standards.

There are two particularly important benefits associated with the approach of aligning assessments with a pacing calendar: First, students are assessed only on material that they have been recently taught. Second, it is typically possible to include more items on each standard being assessed than would otherwise be the case. This increases the amount of information on student performance available for each standard that is assessed.

In contrast, when a school district has many different pacing guides, there are challenges associated with the attempt to align assessment with what is currently targeted for instruction. Disagreements about which standards should be assessed on which benchmarks tend to surface when teachers are not all on the same page. It is difficult to make decisions about which classrooms and pacing guides should take precedence over the others.

In addition, analyzing data and making predictions on how students will do on a high stakes tests is most effective when large numbers of students take an assessment. There is an adverse effect on the stability of item parameter estimates used in determining item difficulty, discrimination, and guessing. With many different pacing guides, the numbers of students taking each assessment decreases.

ATI offers an alternative for school districts that don’t have a widely used pacing guide in place or who would only have small number of students taking each assessment. The Benchmark Assessment Series assesses all grade level standards thereby providing Development Level information for students no matter what pacing guide their teachers are following, allows a greater number of students to take the same assessment, and will pinpoint areas where large groups of students have not mastered concepts which will be assessed on the state tests.