Hello!

If you attend the monthly board meetings, you may have heard terms such as Fastbridge, Progress Monitoring, and Benchmark Testing. Here is an explanation of what those terms are and why they are important. 

Benchmark testing is like a checkup on how students are doing. We administer these tests three times a year. The fall benchmark test gives us an idea of where our students are at the beginning of the year. If a whole class is below the target score, we modify our whole group lesson to put them on track to catch up. If individual students are below the target, we come up with an intervention plan to close the gap while they continue working on grade level assignments. These students need on-grade-level assignments plus more instruction to get back on track. We also look at our students that test way above the target score. Are we challenging them? Are we meeting their needs? Every child deserves to have a year's worth of academic growth. These benchmark assessments help us determine if we are on the right path. Our Winter Benchmark assessment helps us measure student growth from the beginning of the year. We look at grade levels and individual students and come up with plans to ensure these students are getting what they need. The Spring Assessment helps us measure growth and plan for the next year. What classes do we need to help our students? Are students prepared for dual credit classes where they take college classes online and earn college credit while they are a high school student?

If Benchmarking is like an annual checkup with your doctor, progress monitoring like checking your weight or blood pressure on a regular basis to stay on track. We only progress monitor when we are concerned students are not showing the growth we expect on their benchmark assessments. These are the students we are also giving extra lessons to through interventions. We have to have a way to see if the interventions are working. Progress monitoring allows us to spot trends a lot easier through more frequent data collection. Students are progress monitored weekly or biweekly. If the data is improving, we know the intervention is working and we stay the course. If the data is declining, we change the intervention.

Fastbridge is the company we use to administer these assessments. We used to use MAPS. We changed because MAPS would take a minimum of six days worth of instruction over the year to administer. Fastbridge takes about 6 hours of instruction from the whole year to administer. We currently give the Math, Reading, and FASTReading assessments to students. We may give a behavior screener in the future to help us with the behavioral component of the Multi-Tiered System of Supports which says we will help every individual student grow academically and behaviorally while they are in school here. The tests are adaptive and pick up where the students left off from the last assessment. Adaptive tests mean the questions will get easier or harder depending on how students answer questions. This helps us determine if students are below proficient, proficient, or advanced for their grade level.