The Development of Standards and Assessment Documents

Hurray! I just submitted the final version of my standards breakdown and questions. I am so excited to have finished what I set out to do and I feel it is everything I hoped it would be. I can remember sitting in my interview and explaining to my soon to be mentor how I thought the state needed to offer more sample multiple choice questions in order to help teachers better understand the make-up of the state tests and how to better prepare their students for the tests. Once I learned the basics on how to create the questions, I started in on writing sample questions and matching available questions to the standards, it turned out to be much harder than I expected. Writing good questions, creating plausible answers, identifying bias, using the proper vocabulary, and making sure the questions fully aligned with the curriculum was a very difficult task. As an added bonus one of the main requests that came from teachers on our assessment survey was the need for more sample questions and more resources on aligning questions to the standards. Having the affirmation from other teachers that my work was needed made finishing the project that much more satisfying.

Now that they are done I have submitted the standards and questions to the DPI Assessment office and I am hopeful they can find a way to use them to help other teachers feel more comfortable teaching their curriculum and preparing their students for the state assessments. It is my hope that the questions can be used as a framework for other disciplines and can help guide the DPI as they offer more resources to districts and teachers across the state.