ATI will be Exhibiting at the National Head Start Association Conference

ATI will be attending the upcoming National Head Start Association Conference, April 28 through May 2, in National Harbor, Maryland. During the event, ATI will be at Exhibit #321 demonstrating the new features within Galileo Pre-K Online, including:

G3 Technology Scale
School Readiness Scales and reporting tools
Pre-K Parent Center expanded activities for families
Pre-K Parent Center Activity Report
Coming soon: Outcomes Analysis Report

NHSA 40th Annual National Training Conference
Hosted by National Head Start Association (NHSA)
Date: April 28 – May 2
Location: Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland
Conference Info

New Challenges and Solutions Related to Evaluating Educator Effectiveness

Evaluating educator effectiveness has become a major concern across the nation. The fundamental premise underlying this concern is that good teaching and effective educational management carried out in a supportive learning environment ought to produce enhanced learning. The linking of educator evaluation to student learning has changed the nature of educator evaluation in significant ways. The stakes associated with the evaluation process have been raised. Educator evaluation has become more formalized, subjected to greater scrutiny, and extensively controlled by state law. The inclusion of student data has increased the complexity of the evaluation process. Whereas in the past educator evaluation was limited in the main to informal observations, now in many states results of student assessments involving dozens of subjects are becoming or are being considered for inclusion as a required component of the evaluation process. Additional complexity stems from the need to consider multiple data sources for multiple classes of educators in the evaluation initiative. Finally, in order to realize the goal of improving learning through effective instruction, there is a need for dynamic evaluation systems that continually examine the relationships among ratings of educator effectiveness, professional development offerings based on those ratings and measures of student progress. For the past few years, ATI has been working closely with local education agencies to meet the challenges of evaluating educator effectiveness. As a result of this work, ATI has developed a comprehensive Instructional Effectiveness Assessment System.

The system is designed to address several key questions requiring action on the part of local education agencies in order to implement an effective, locally designed educator effectiveness system. These include:

• How do we effectively link educator performance to student learning outcomes? 
• How do we weight and compile multiple data sources for different educators to produce an overall proficiency score? 
• How do we ensure that student performance data is reliable, valid, and useful for measuring growth? 
• How do we ensure that teacher performance data is reliable, valid, and useful for guiding professional development and practice? 
• How do we obtain actionable data throughout the year to inform decision-making?

To address these key questions, the Galileo comprehensive Instructional Effectiveness Assessment System has evolved in ways that now provide local education agencies with:

• Reliable and valid educator rating scales aligned to the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) Model Core Teaching Standards, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Educational Leadership Policy Standards, and Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
• Reliable and valid measures of student progress in state-tested subjects;
• Reliable and valid measures of student progress non-state-tested subjects;
• An Evaluation Score Compiler that weights and automatically combines educator effectiveness indicators into a single score. 

Moreover, Galileo uses Item Response Theory (IRT) techniques to validate teacher performance scales and student assessment scales to produce a Proficiency Scale Score and Achievement/Growth Scores, respectively. IRT provides a continuous interval scale score to measure changes in proficiency and student growth over time. And IRT produces indicators of measurement precision including item difficulty, item discrimination and reliability.

If you would like to learn more about the ways in which we are supporting locally designed educator effectiveness initiatives contact us via email or at 877.442.5453 for more information. Also, watch for summer training opportunities that focus on educator effectiveness. Click here to access all current events, seminars, and webinars.

Implementing a Comprehensive Instructional Effectiveness Assessment System

If you missed ATI’s March 26 webinar, Implementing a Comprehensive Instructional Effectiveness Assessment System - don’t worry. The webinar was recorded and the recording is available at the following link.

Click here to watch video.
Click here to access other webinar presentation summary documents.

Linking educator effectiveness to student learning has changed the nature of educator evaluation in significant ways. The fundamental premise underlying this linkage is that good teaching and effective educational management carried out in a supportive learning environment ought to produce enhanced learning. For the past few years, ATI has been working closely with Local Education Agencies to meet the challenges of including student learning in the evaluation of educator effectiveness. As a result of this work, ATI has developed a Comprehensive Instructional Effectiveness Assessment System.

Watch for summer training opportunities that focus on educator effectiveness. Click here to access all current events, seminars, and webinars. Contact your ATI Field Services Coordinator by email or at 877.442.5453 for more information.

Dashboard Technology

Galileo Dashboard technology provides an easily accessible gateway to the simultaneous viewing of high-value, real-time, actionable reports. Your user login information will determine the Dashboard view available when you access Galileo which means that you can see immediately and all in one place the information most relevant to your specific needs. The Dashboard page can be viewed at three levels: A District Level View, a School Level View, and a Staff Level (teacher) View. 

The District Level and School Level views provide in a single location technology to manage a complete Instructional Effectiveness System. System tools include Instructional Effectiveness Rating Scales, Rating Results, aggregated measures of student growth, and an Evaluation Score Compiler Summary that differentially weights and automatically combines diverse indicators of education effectiveness into a single educator effectiveness score.

The Staff Level View includes a home page and an Instructional Effectiveness page. The home page provides teachers with a quick view of recent and upcoming events such as tests, assignments, lessons, and more. The Instructional Effectiveness page includes a Performance Tracker assisting teachers to plan both future instruction and reteaching interventions. In addition, the page provides a Teacher Proficiency Profile and an overall evaluation of instructional effectiveness used to plan professional development. 

Upcoming ATI Hosted and Attended Events

K-12 - Live Webinar: Implementing a Comprehensive Instructional Effectiveness Assessment System
Hosted by Assessment Technology Incorporated
Date: March 26
Time: 11:00 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. MST
This webinar is complimentary
Learn more and register

Evaluating educator effectiveness has become a major concern across the nation. The fundamental premise underlying this concern is that good teaching and effective educational management carried out in a supportive learning environment ought to produce enhanced learning. The linking of educator evaluation to student learning has changed the nature of educator evaluation in significant ways. For the past few years, ATI has been working closely with Local Education Agencies to meet the challenges of evaluating educator effectiveness. As a result of this work, ATI has developed a Comprehensive Instructional Effectiveness Assessment System.

Pre-K - Ohio Head Start Association School Readiness Summit
Hosted by Ohio Head Start Association (OHSA)
Date: April 3
Location: Doubletree Worthington, Columbus, Ohio
ATI Getting the Most of Your Data session and literature table with school readiness resources
Conference Info

K-12 - Galileo K-12 Online: Supporting Educational Initiatives with Comprehensive Assessment
Hosted by Colorado League of Charter Schools (CLCS) and Assessment Technology Incorporated
Date: April 5
Location: Colorado League of Charter Schools' Office, 725 S. Broadway, Conference Room
Denver, Colorado 80209
Time: 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. MDT
Attendance and lunch are complimentary for Charter members and $20 for non-members
Learn more and register

Assessment Technology Incorporated is offering a seminar for Colorado League of Charter School members to learn about the Galileo K-12 Online Instructional Improvement and Instructional Effectiveness System (IIIES). Galileo is a comprehensive, standards-based, and research-supported IIIES providing educators with a full array of valid and reliable assessments, reporting, instruction and intervention tools with state and Common Core State Standards built in and ready for use. The seminar will provide an overview of Galileo's comprehensive assessments, including locally customized interim benchmark assessments, formative assessments, standards-aligned pretests and posttests, final course and summative assessments, test arrays, dialogic assessments, computerized multi-stage adaptive tests, and ASK Technology for using assessments initially built outside Galileo.

Pre-K - NHSA 40th Annual National Training Conference
Hosted by National Head Start Association (NHSA)
Date: April 28 – May 2
Location: Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland

ATI Exhibit #321 with online demonstrations
Conference Info

New features within Galileo Pre-K Online to be demonstrated:
• G3 Technology Scale
• School Readiness Scales and reporting tools
• Parent Center Activity Report and the Outcomes Analysis Report - coming soon• Pre-K Parent Center expanded activities for families
• Curriculum resources with enhanced activities including Spanish storybooks - coming soon

ATI Expanding Common Core State Standards Comprehensive Benchmark Assessment Series

Starting in 2013-14, ATI will expand the offerings of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Comprehensive Benchmark Assessment Series. These options will include ATI’s traditional benchmark assessment item types along with assessments which contain new innovative item types.

There are many positives to both versions of the assessments.

• Both options will provide partnership districts with a view of where students are in the mastery of specific CCSS.  
• Both options will test instruction and provide valuable data for districts about where to best employ interventions.  
• Both options will employ the same high quality items and with the added rigor that CCSS require. 
• Both options will provide information about the growth of students as they move through the year.

ATI’s traditional benchmark assessments are automatically graded and provide immediate results for many of the common core standards once the test answer sheet is scanned or the test is administered online. Data analyses can be completed as soon as 80 percent of students complete the assessments. The test is graded without any possibility of bias from humans grading items differently from one another.

The assessments which contain new innovative item types provide students with the experience of taking open response items and other innovative items types using technology which may be required when the new state tests are released.  They also allow students to perform tasks at a higher Depth of Knowledge. Please Note: For these assessments, teachers will need to grade some of the items and input the scores before the test analyses can be completed.

District resources, district timelines for wanting data from the benchmarks, and local control will definitely affect which test option will work best for a district. There is one way districts can get the best of both options: Administer ATI’s traditional benchmark assessments for quick reliable data and also offer the open response items on a separate short test for teachers and schools who want the teachers and students to have the experience of taking and grading the higher Depth of Knowledge items.

Integrating Technology and Teaching Strategies to Develop Common Core Curricula

If you missed ATI’s February 26 webinar on how Galileo K-12 Online can help incorporate Common Core State Standards for assessment and intervention - don’t fret. The webinar was recorded and available at the following link.  

Click here to watch video.

Click here to access other webinar presentation summary documents.

Common Core State Standards are more than a new set of standards. They promote a fundamentally different view regarding the goals of curriculum and instructional strategies, the nature of assessment, and the relationship between instruction and assessment. In keeping with the Common Core State Standards’ approach to education, ATI has developed new dialogic technology, new assessment technology, and new community initiatives to build and share instructional materials that not only reflect core standards, but also exemplify teaching practices designed to increase student depth of knowledge to promote college and career readiness

Thanks to the success of the webinar, additional webinars will be promoted over the next couple of months. Be sure to watch for an email from ATI with more information. Click here to access all current events, seminars, and webinars. Contact your ATI Field Services Coordinator at 877.442.5453 for more information.

It can also be found on the ATI website.