California Charter School Wants Data to Drive Student Groupings

California Charter School Wants Data to Drive Student Groupings

This school is looking for a digital assessment tool that will allow them to deliver benchmark and formative assessments.

State: California Number of Students: 490
School Type: Charter School Free and Reduced Lunch: 81.0%
Grade Level: K-8 English Language Learners: 54.5%

School Context

This charter school network currently serves one K-12 school with 750 students and will be opening a new K-12 school next year. 90% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch. The model is predominantly project-based learning, but in the new school they will enrich it with competency-based progression for skill acquisition.


State of Technology

This network has a project-based learning model, but when it comes to discrete skills acquisition, students in grade level bands do not necessarily share the same skills. Often, student's ability to move through content is controlled by the teacher. They need that to change. They want to group students by skill levels for part of the day and allow them to move through content standards at their own pace. They will then regularly group and re-group students based on their demonstrated mastery on content standards.

Currently, content instruction (non-project based learning classes) are very traditional. Students do direct instruction, mini-lessons and then give students time for guided practice. This makes it difficult for students to move at their own pace and focus on the skills that are important to them.


Tech Needs & Requirements

The network would like a platform that can deploy digital assessments, score and mark assessments that are multiple choice and then share the data back so that we can group and regroup students on a regular basis.

They would like the ability to upload their own content but would prefer if the tool came with its own assessment bank. Digital assessments should mirror the Common Core content, with Common Core question types.

The tool should be able to grade multiple choice questions automatically. However, for open ended questions it should allow teachers to score them on their own. If an embedded rubric was available for scoring constructive responses, that would be great. This is not a non-negotiable.

They need the assessments to support a competency based model. In our model students will focus on a skill strand by beginning with a benchmark assessment, which will help identify which skills the student has yet to master. Then the digital assessments should break down into discrete skills that students can take as they move through the curriculum at their own pace. Once they think they have mastered all the skills in that strand, the student should be able to take a digital benchmark assessment again. If they pass they should be able to move onto the next content strand.

Students need to have a lot of control. They should be able to have some choice over what skills they tackle. They also need to have access and control over their data. It would be nice if they could manipulate data and take screenshots of their growth in order to store in a google portfolio site.

The teacher will be responsible for grading constructive responses on the tool, so it is important that they can do this quickly. All the benchmark assessments will be written and submitted onto the tool by administrators. Teachers also need the ability to see student data quickly in order to group and regroup students for the next day instruction.

The network provides students with 1:1 Chromebooks. The tool must have SBAC aligned question bank, be able to structure and order assessments to align to a competency based model, auto-grade multiple choice, give students the ability to take assessments on their own, without teacher permission and include some data dashboard or display of data. They want proficiency data, so that we can track how students are doing on min-benchmarks, and on each content strand. They also need to be able to set the bar for proficiency. In some classes it will be set at 70% and others will be 60%. They need to have some control over this. At the end of the day, the data needs to be in a format to make instructional decisions about grouping decisions the next day. They also plan on exporting data and uploading it into Schoolzilla. The tool must export to CSV. They are a google apps school, so any single sign on integration would be a plus, but not non-negotiable. Any integration possible with Schoolzilla would be great, but not a non-negotiable.

*Content From 2015

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