The individual test results are printed and mailed to parents in the fall of the next school year, and the school gets copies. Teachers, including Mr. Black and Mrs. White, are welcome to come to the file room and look at them, which they do individually, examining the performances of the few students that puzzle them. The state assessments have also recently changed, making it difficult for Mr. Black and Mrs. White to understand the results.

At Generic High School, students receive little direct benefit from helping the state Department of Education rate their school.

Turning State Testing into Formative Assessment

Let ASCL's consultants help you pull formative information out of standardized testing - information that can help your staff guide program design. The data files made available to the school after state testing are often a treasure of information that can be used to shape program design and help individual students. ASCL's consultants can help you take the students' investment of time and effort in testing and turn it into advantages and opportunities for them.

ASCL consultants and faculty members work together to develop instructional plans or interventions that target key needs revealed in the testing. The plans may involve:

Selection of a school-wide focus to martial activities toward key needs.
Selection of group-learning activities designed to help with a number of needs.
An assessment plan with benchmarks to insure that students attain needed skills.
Selection of individualized interventions, including computer-aided instruction.
After-school programs.

Examples of Data Interpolation and Extrapolation from Standardized Testing (these files link to Word documents):

Targeting scanning skills
Targeting textual reading skills
Getting students to take testing seriously
Targeting tables and graphs