CBT Weekly Updates, 11/16/18
- More than 600 schools have ordered CBT for this spring administration, and nearly 200 of those schools are new to CBT this year.
- We’re working with three Diocese that have issued mandates that all schools must administer at least one grade CBT—we really appreciate the support the RICs provide to their Religious & Independent Schools.
- There will be changes to selections for Testing Accommodations in Nextera Admin this year to align more closely with the print answer sheets:
- We will add the ELL/MLL accommodations selections:
- Separate Location
- Bilingual dictionaries and glossaries
- Oral Translation
- We will add the ELL/MLL accommodations selections:
- CBT Technology Readiness is “lagging” behind the orders—around 230 schools have completed Technology Readiness (out of more than 600).
- Is this due to the fact that Technology Readiness was late last year, so the expectation may be that Technology Readiness is completed after the ordering system closes?
- Ordering System closes on December 14 and the Technology Readiness deadline is December 28, 2018.
- We’ve worked the past two weeks with BOCES and issues of administering CBT at virtual schools: these are classrooms that are rented/leased in a district school building that are not wholly owned and operated by the BOCES.
- Complications arise with being able to verify CBT Technology Readiness in a space that the BOCES does not own or operate the technical infrastructure.
- Our current rule, what we have worked with for the past two years with five different BOCES programs works well for BOCES program schools where the brick-n-mortar is owned/operated by the BOCES—their own physical schools.
- We are going to work with at least one BOCES that has reached out with 23 leased classrooms in different “host” districts to administer CBT in at least one grade level; the first steps are to communicate and document the following:
- Students in grade levels in those leased classrooms that are eligible for the Grades 3-8 assessments (many may be NYSAA students)
- Whether or not the host district is administering computer or paper assessments
- Additional questions have arisen about having to administer to all students in a grade level one the same day in the different BOCES buildings: unless this presents a significant challenge—the rule/CBT requirement stands:
- All students in the same grade level must test on the same day in the same test session with Session 1 and Session 2 being administered on consecutive days.
- If you have a BOCES program that has a significant challenge to meeting this CBT requirement, please send it to CBT Support for discussion at the Office of State Assessment.
- Reminder: the IEP and 504 Plan determines how an assessment is delivered to a student, and a student very well may have a testing accommodation that indicates “student must test on paper” or “student may not test on computer.”
- Please order a “Test Read” paper copy for this student when ordering CBT for the grade level.
- Upcoming content: we are going to post articles to direct folks to the Readiness Tools from Questar on the Questar website:
- Test Your Internet Network for CBT
- Test Your Student Devices for CBT