SBAC Site Coordinator Meeting Fall 2014

Summary and List of things to do from 

SBAC Site Coordinator Fall 2014 Meeting

Full Agenda Posted Here: http://goo.gl/S1BWJF

Summary and Things to Do 

• Address issues in SEIS regarding 5th, 8th, and 10th graders who are missing a Science assessment in their Future IEP

• Districtwide Practice test activity similar to last year on 2/11/15 and 2/12/15

• Review Site Testing Calendars and begin preparing:
• PVHS or HHS need to move first day of testing up one day. Nick/Don have paper/rock/scissors contest to figure it out who is moving their 1st day
• Look at your site calendar and ensure that there are no major events on campus (field trips, IEPs, staff development, conferences, fancy brunches etc...)
• Share with your site leadership teams and solicit feedback
• Any changes to your testing calendar need to be updated on your Site Testing calendar spreadsheet and I need you to notify me of the changes

• Headphones- I forgot to mention this in the meeting. All students will need headphones for the ELA portion of both the Non PT and the PT. Most students preferred to use (and brought) their own headphones. This was approximately 80% to 90% of the students at all sites. Last year your friendly district office purchased and delivered headphones for roughly 40% of your testing students in grades 3-8 and 11. You will need to locate and prepare these for distribution to your teachers during testing including the ELA practice test activity 

• Bookmark and review the following two sites:
• SBAC Site Coordinator Blogger- http://puhsdsbac.blogspot.com/
• Running record of all Site Coordinator informational items
• SBAC Haiku Pages: http://goo.gl/zxNNgv
• Home page- General updates and resources for all teachers and staff
• Site Coordinator- Specific resources for the SBAC Site Coordinator

SBAC Site Coordinator

Good afternoon,

According to my records you have been selected by your principal to be the administrator responsible for coordinating SBAC testing at your site. If this is not the case, please notify me right away as to which sucker at your site is overseeing this.

During the weeks of 10/20 to 10/31 your ELA, Math, and History teachers will be administering unit assessments aligned to Smarter Balanced Item Specifications. 

Some of the ELA assessments (see spreadhseet below for specific grade levels) have audio/video components to them and require students to use headphones. Your friendly district office supplied about 300 headphones per site last year for SBAC. Please work with your ELA department chair to provide these to teachers administering the unit assessments. Most students (about 85% of them) chose to use their own headphones. Be sure to collect them when the assessments are completed as you will need them in the Spring.

Also, this is a good warm up activity from a logistical perspective to get ready for the summative SBAC assessments. I suggest dropping into classes and observing the process of kids logging in and navigating the tests and taking some mental notes on what we can do to ensure that testing is efficient and effective for teachers and students in the Spring.

This link has the EADMS Test IDs and the dates (in the process of being updated) for the different assessments.

Preparations for CAASPP/SBAC Testing

As we approach the CAASPP/SBAC Field Testing dates, please review the following:

• A 2013-14 CAASP Security Affidavit needs to be reviewed with and signed by all district employees who may potentially have access to CST/CAPA/CMA materials or may potentially be present in the same room as students taking SBAC. 

• Only PUHSD District employees (who have a signed security affidavit) may be present in SBAC testing rooms or have access to STAR materials. Outside consultants, visiting WASC members, members of the press, staff from other districts, outside service technicians, parents/community members and all other non district employees are not permitted in the testing rooms at any time.

• Please review the Field Test Preparation Document at this link: http://goo.gl/1YklFY that has some key reminders and things to do to prepare for the Field Test.

• I am working on a plan for support coverage so that in addition to your site IT Tech, there will be additional support from Ed Services. That will be posted here

• Review the Online Haiku Classroom Activities created by our Instructional Technology Coaches. Coordinate plan for sending this activity and making sure that students who were absent on the Class Activity are able to receive instruction on it. 

• Printed copies of the Test Administrator Manual (TAM) are being shipped to your sites. There is a small insert that has the day of testing instructions. You will still need to provide the daily "cheat sheet" based on the specific test you are administering each day. 

• You will need to become familiar with the Online Reporting System (ORS) to track make up testing and incomplete tests. Tutorials are posted on your Friendly District SBAC Page. We will also explore this in the CAASPP After testing meeting on 5/6/14 at 7:00 am in TR 1. 

• Please complete your CST/CAPA/CMA Initial Inventory by Tuesday 4/22/14 at 5 pm. 

• Review the video tutorials regarding the Online Reporting System (ORS). These two tutorials are posted on the SBAC Site Coordinator page.

Please add the following comments to this blog post: 

• Clarifying question that you have regarding any of the information on this blog, the  Things to do List, or just in general

• At least one additional item (that should be added to the "Things to do list" that will help your colleagues plan and prepare for testing. 

Preparations for SBAC TA Training

Good evening,

The following is a list of what needs to happen to prep for the SBAC TA trainings at your sites:

Site Things to Do to Prepare for TA Training:

• SBAC Site Coordinator will need to block out their Calendar from 7 am to 11 am in order to prepare and be present for the training

• After you meet with your teachers and discuss the CAASPP Security affidavits and review the classroom activity, please alphabetize your affidavits (by last name), scan and then upload to the CAASPP Security Affidavit Folder in Google Drive

• Book a room with a projector and Chromebooks for all participants. Chromebooks will need to be charged, and the SBAC App needs to be tested. (include a few extras)

• Print an EADMS student log in card for each participant (include a few extras)

• Locate and provide headphones for each participant and have them in the room and plugged into each Chromebook the day before the training

• Please post a value added comment or question to this blogpost

• Make sure teachers request an all day sub

Ed Services Things to Do to Prepare for TA Training:

• Print Directions For Administration (DFA) for each TA (include a 15% overage)
• Print and distribute student Global Commands Sheets
• Create Mail Merge cards with TA Temporary username/password (if necessary)
• Cross reference Google Form Security affidavits with Scanned hard copy affidavits and then create the TIDE user accounts
• Print copies for each participant of the TA Activities

SBAC Question of the Week

How will you (or your sites) handle testing with mixed grade levels? For example, if you are testing by 3rd period class and you have 6th graders with the ELA PT and 7th graders with the math PT in the same 3rd period class, what is your plan?

Performance Task Assignments

Good morning,

Please this link for your Performance Task assignments. Estimated Times for your testing situations can be found on pages 34 and 35 of the Site Coordinator's Manual. What PT did you get? Please post in the comments below.

Weekend Homework

Have a Great Weekend Turkeys!

SBAC TIDE User Accounts and Monday TA Training

Good morning, 

You should have just recently recieved your SBAC TIDE Username and Password. TIDE is the SBAC system you will use to manage accessibility options, generate testing sessions, run absent reports, and view student information. Your teachers will receive a similar email with their usernames and passwords but these will be generated as they go through the training and immediately after we review and sign the security affidavits. Since your user privileges are different I needed to set yours up ahead of time but you will be able to see this process with your Tech Coaches in the room. 

You will need to change your password and you can poke around the system. Please do not add any users. This will be handled from my office and only users who attend the training and have signed affidavits on file will receive a user account. Unauthorized user accounts will be monitored and deleted immediately. Please post a comment below regarding your process for adding users to TIDE. Yes, it is a trick question. Please read above for the answer. Also, please confirm (in the comments section) that you received the email from Smarter Balanced with your username/password. 

Please arrive by 12:45 for the TA training tomorrow. Here is the agenda and it is also posted on the calendar invite. 

Preparations for Math Practice Test during PLC Meeting on Monday

After implementing the SBAC Practice test for ELA we learned some valuable lessons and will therefore make slight adjustments to the SBAC Practice test Math activity on 2/26/14. We found the solution to the "Kiosk Application cannot be installed" error message and need to address the high number of students who didn't submit the Google form.

In PLC on Monday, please review the lesson plan and Directions for Administration and please note the following revisions/additions from the ELA lesson:

• Added instructions at the beginning of the Directions for Administration to include Wifi authentication (this will eliminate the Kiosk application error) and teacher verification for the submission of the student Google Form
• Added teacher verification forms
• Hard copy to be filled out at the end of each period, signed and submitted to the SBAC Site Coordinator
• Google Form Electronic copy to be filled out by the teacher at the end of the testing day
• Demo the Ontario video on adding lines and points

Please email or call me Friday or over the weekend if you have any questions. Please leave a comment on this blog with a clarifying question (don't be a pumpkin eater and ask something goofy just to say you asked a question), or a value added comment. 

SBAC 2-7-14 Things to Do on Monday

Good afternoon SBAC Site Coordinators,

Here are a few last reminders on things to do to prepare for the SBAC Practice test activity on Tuesday, February 11th:

• Visit your ELA PLC Monday morning to review the Directions for Administration Presentation on the Lesson Plan and specifically the last few slides on troubleshooting and highlight the SBAC Practice Test FAQ's document. Also address the following:
• Where should kids report if they don't have their Chromebook? 
• Where will your Techs be located? Who do the teachers call if they get any of the common error messages? 
• Review the student survey with the teachers. Remind them that if the student wasn't able to take the test on their own chromebook, they need to mark no on the form and the reason why. Take this survey yourself before Monday, demo it in PLC. 
• Please post a brief comment on this blog regarding any specific questions you have, a bright idea that may benefit one of your colleagues, or your general plan of attack on Monday. 

• Review your master schedule and distribute the extra headphones to teachers. You may want to ask them to keep the little wire ties and have the kids tie them up when they are done. They get really tangled and messy without these. Remember that there are only a few per teacher

• Send a phone dialer on Sunday and/or Monday reminding students to bring their Chromebooks and headphones. (Make the message known that we are not requiring students go out and buy headphones and we will provide them if necessary but we want to give them the option of using their own). 

• The site techs will checkout a few loaner Chromebooks to the teachers (these will be scanned in and out) and they will collect them on February 12th. 

• The site techs will be available to walk classrooms with you and you will need to communicate to staff that they will be unavailable for other day to day duties. 

• Testing Coordinator Manual was posted on February 7th. Review at your leisure, no need to memorize at this point. 

Good evening, 

The email message below went out to all students in grades 5-11. This will hopefully help us with getting students the most updated Chrome version so they can access the SBAC app. 

Updated instructions for students to access the SBAC Practice Test have been added to the SBAC Practice Test Lesson Plan. There are some troubleshooting slides that I added and there are two screens on the practice test that SBAC changed slightly. Please post a clarifying question or comment at the bottom of this blog (making sure you are paying attention). 

The site techs are doing a great job of working with students to put their devices back on the PUHSD Management system. Please continue to monitor and coordinate the effort to get students into the library so that they can have the techs review their devices. 

Joe and his team are working to get loaner Chromebooks to the ELA teachers on February 11th and we need you to add the classrooms to this Google Spreadsheet for all ELA teachers at your site. He is also working with the some of our Network/Wifi contractors to have them out to observe our network being pushed to the limit, thanks Joe!

Thank you for all of your hard work, happy testing!

Student Email Message: 

Hello students, 

In the next week you will be working on a few activities in class that will require the latest Chrome web browser updates. Some of your teachers will walk you through this in class but we would like you to update your Chrome browser ahead of time if possible. To complete the update, please do the following: 

1. Click on the Chrome Browser button (muliti color circle on the bottom left hand side of the screen)

2. Type chrome://chrome in the browser window and then push enter

3. Chrome will begin the update process. Please check back in a few minutes and then click on the button that says restart. 

Thank you for your attention to this, have a great week!

Sincerely, 

Perris Union High School District Technology Department

SBAC Chrome App Preparations

Good afternoon,

Based on feedback from our Techie Tester Teachers and extensive testing with students in classrooms, we have learned of two unique problems that are preventing students from accessing the Chrome SBAC App.

1. Student devices have been disenrolled from the PUHSD management system. This is problematic for numerous reasons but the immediate concern is that these devices will not pick up the SBAC App and will be unable to access the practice/field test. It is easy to identify this by having the student click on their profile picture (bottom right hand side of the screen) and then looking for the "This device is managed by puhsd.org" message."

2. Some devices are not receiving the latest Chrome update and the SBAC app freezes. This can be improved by having the student power down their device and then power it on again. After this, have the student open up the Chrome browser and type in chrome://chrome/ and the browser should update.

Thanks to Shane Pinnell in the Technology department for several hours of advanced voodu and technical work we were able to identify students who have a Chromebook checked out to them but those devices haven't logged into our network in the last two weeks. There are a few possibilities here that include the following:

• Device was disenrolled from the PUHSD management system 
• The student hasn't brought their Chromebook to school/signed into our network

What do you need to do? 

Work with your office staff, site technology technician, and your temporary technicians to review the list of student devices and determine if the device is on the management console and that it is updated to the latest version of Chrome. Site Techs will need to document students who have devices that are not in the PUHSD Management system. 

Please ensure that all students have their Chromebooks reviewed prior to February 10th. I suggest working with your History department to identify the dates that they will be administering the LCAP Survey to their students as that will be a double incentive for kids to have their devices on campus those days. The student list was emailed to you on 1-31-14. 

1-30-14 SBAC Test Coordinator Manual, Tutorials, and Communications

SBAC Coordinators,

Smarter Balanced recently posted the Test Administrator Manual (TAM) that gives us some clarification and guidance on the administrative aspects of the Field Test. Please "peruse" this document but know that in the next week or so, the California Department of Education (CDE) and Educational Testing Service (ETS) will release test coordinator and test administrator manuals specific to California. We will learn these new regulations and procedures together in our Coordinator meetings but I wanted to share the online resources with you at: http://sbac.portal.airast.org/field-test/resources/

The Training Test has now been released and it is slightly different than the practice test. The significant differences are outlined on pages 27 to 29 of the TAM. (See screenshots below)

The district will be communicating information to parents regarding the SBAC practice test activity on February 11th with a letter sent to all students in grades 5-11 and an Ed Connect phone dialer. The letter will reach parents on or around 2/7/14 and the dialer will be sent on 2/3/14. The phone dialer will inform students to bring their Chromebooks and their headphones on the day of the practice test. Students are not required to bring headphones, we will provided them if needed.

SBAC Practice Test vs Training Test

SBAC Field Test Resources

#SBAC has released updated Field Test training materials posted on the portal site http://goo.gl/0GcTnc.

CAASPP Calendar Due

The California Assessment of Student Progress and Performance (CAASPP), (formerly CalMapp which was formerly STAR) calendars need to be resubmitted to account for the SBAC maintenance downtime scheduled on 4/10 and 4/11. We also need to have either ELA, math, or a combo of ELA/math teachers proctoring the SBAC Field test. Please re-submit your calendars by next Wednesday, January 29th at 5:00 pm.  I don't need the calendars in any special format but they should be in a professional and presentable format that can be shared with your staff once they are approved by Ed Services and Cabinet. Please review the SBAC Site Coordinator document from December and the information below for the complete list of mandated assessments.

Remember that SBAC is down for maintenance on the following dates:

Thursday, April 10 – Sunday, April 13, 2014

Thursday, May 8 – Sunday, May 11, 2014

California Assessment of Student Progress and Performance (CAASPP)

• EAP ELA in Grade 11
• Writing exam Feb-March (1 class period)
• Full CST, two parts (Part 1- 85 min, Part 2- 100 min)
• EAP Math in Grade 11
• 11th grade students  in Algebra 2, and courses beyond Algebra 2 (Stats, Calculus etc)
• Full CST, two parts (Part 1- 90 min, Part 2- 105 min)
• Grade Level Science
• All students in Grades 5,8, and 10
• CST, CMA, and CAPA
• Two parts (60 min each for a total of 120 min)
• CAPA ELA and Math
• Grades 2-11
• SBAC Field Test (see below)

SBAC Field Testing Window and Assignments

• Test Coordinator Manuals and documentation to be released in late January by SBAC
• Field Test Window is 4/7 to 5/16 for all schools in our district and almost all schools in the county
• 95% of students will take a combo test of both ELA and Math items and a Performance Task in one content area. 5% of students will take an ELA only test or a Math only test (PTs included)
• Both groups (combo and single testers) will test for approximately 4.5 hours and both include a full performance task
• It is anticipated that the test will be broken up into 4 separate sections of 45 to 55 min each but schools can test students in longer or shorter sessions
• Performance Task content area assignments probably won’t be known until students log in. Questions regarding the classroom activity were raised to staff at CDE, possible that PT will be towards middle. More to follow
• In PUHSD, only students in grades 5-8 and grade 11 will test. No 9th or 10th graders were selected for the Scientific sample

SBAC Informational Items 1-20-14

Good afternoon, 

Listed below are some SBAC updates, please thoroughly review and contact me if you have any questions: 

• We are shipping the Global Commands sheet and Headphones to sites, you should receive your shipments on Friday. The headphone order was based on the student feedback (80% of students prefered to use their own). Since you are testing period by period for the practice test, the number of headphones needed are lower. You will need to communicate to students that they should bring their headphones on the day of the ELA test. Headphones will be provided for students that don't have headphones on the day of the test.

• During the practice test, all students are expected to participate. Students who don't have Chromebooks on the day of testing will need to be directed to an alternate testing room (ie lab).

• The name of the statewide assessment program (formerly STAR) is being changed from California Measurement of Progress and Performance (CalMapp) to the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP). This includes SBAC, and the former STAR assessments

• SBAC will be down for maintenance on Thursday April 10- Sunday April 13th and May 8th to May 11th. These dates will affect some of your schedules so I will need you to resubmit your CAASPP calendars if they are affected. Also, please rework your calendars to ensure that either ELA and/or math teachers are proctoring SBAC (the all staff schedule at PMS/CMI is fine for this). An easy fix for this is to have US History teachers proctor the 11th Grade CST in lieu of SBAC

• Please work with your technology coaches regarding the trainings for the districtwide practice test activity. They need to know the dates when they are providing trainings for your teachers. Also, remember that he role of the Tech Coach is coaching teachers and providing professional development. 

• The SBAC Chrome App was recently released. The IT department is working on some network configurations and will hopefully be able to push the app out to student devices soon. 

• I am updating the instructions for the SBAC practice test to include the Chrome App and will have those completed by tomorrow afternoon. 

• The SBAC Site Coordinator Part 2 meeting is on March 4th and is posted on the State Testing Calendar along with the calendar invite send to each coordinator individually.  Your CAASPP test dates will be posted there also. 

• SBAC Google + Hangout scheduled on 1/31 to answer questions and review information for the Districtwide Practice Test Activity.