Clinton City Schools’ administrators are utilizing a new method of assessments to measure student proficiency.
NC Check-Ins are interim assessments developed by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction that are aligned to the North Carolina grade-level content standards in both language arts and math.
According to Dr. Kelly Batts, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction, the Clinton district began using the new tests last year and only used them for students at Sunset Avenue School. Typically, students take benchmark tests periodically throughout the year to measure the student’s progress at midpoints in the semester. The new assessments measure a student’s proficiency in an area a teacher has taught instead of measuring growth, as the old method did.
There are three testing windows for the NC Check-Ins. Student will complete these assessments between October-November, January-February and March-April.
NC Check-Ins provide in-depth action-data for students who are tested in language arts in grades 4-8 and math for students in grades 3-8. This data is a reliable estimate of the students’ current performance on the selected subset of content standards.
According to Batts, the NC Check-Ins share a common item bank with the North Carolina End of Grade tests that are given to determine a students growth at the end of year school year.
“The NC Check-Ins do replace benchmarks and we chose to use them because the tests are written by the same people who write test items for our North Carolina End of Grade tests,” Batts said. “They are very aligned to what students will see on their end of grade test.”
While schools are not required to participate and use NC Check-Ins, Batts said the reports the teachers and administrators receive from the testing sessions provides valuable information about individual student strengths and weaknesses, as well as group strengths and weaknesses.
“We expanded our use of NC Check-Ins this year to include all reading and math for grades 3-8,” Batts explained. “What parents should know is that these tests are formative — meaning that they are used to help inform the teacher about the effectiveness of instruction, how to intervene, and planning with their team of teachers. They are not like other tests that are used as grades for students in a grade book. They also don’t really measure growth. It is a measure of proficiency on a select group of standards that the teachers have already taught.”
After testing is complete, each NC Check-In generates a student-level report that indicates the number of items correctly answered for a content standard, item type, and selection type. Teacher-level reports provide a summary with similar information. Parents receive a student report with an overall score by standard and item number.
There is evidence of significant correlation between scores from the NC Check-Ins and the End of Grade assessment scores, however the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction does not have validity evidence to support that using the results from the Check-Ins as a predictor of student performance at the end of a school year.
