Reading

Notes from September 27, 2010 retreat
Facilitators: Carol Jessen, ESU #8; Molly Aschoff, ESU #8 Consultant: Becky Brandl, ESU #8 Recorder: JaLena Slack, ESU #8

Teachers will be most familiar with the Performance Level, not the Scale score Question on whether the Scale score will remain the same
 * no answer on whether or not it will (no one has any information, presently)
 * we would like the above question answered....
 * Margaret stated that Reading results will be immediate this year, Math will have to wait until August
 * Scale score conversion scale will be able to give more information on a student (how many questions away is a student on a scale)

Individual Student Scores (on NeSA Interpretation p. 4-7)
 * Carol went through the report
 * comparing students (district, state)
 * Teachers should be familiar with the report
 * how do we involve parents?
 * Some districts have already sent out, little to no parent questions

Familiarize Teachers on the Tools of the NeSA-R
 * brought up that some students spent too much time using the tools
 * should tutorials be used more?

Teacher reports:
 * familiarizing teachers with the report

Indicator summaries
 * comparisons (male/female, ethnicity, special groups)
 * baseline year
 * distribution

District Work Time:
 * eDirect Login and Password (https://ne.drcedirect.com/)

Creating a Graph using data:
 * Carol displayed a graph of students __meeting__ the State standards and those __below__ state standards
 * question brought up about using this type of data as a Northern Tier or your own school district (no response from group)
 * Wheeler Central - spreadsheet for students, by grade, "below, meet, exceeds" (scores included), writing scores, if in SPED (what area), Free or Reduced, number of Absences
 * Clearwater - where students are compared to the average (spreadsheet)
 * Staff should be aware of the data
 * Russ - Northern Tier, by grade level, combination of all of the schools, (# of students, below, meets, exceeds), total at the bottom with column percents,
 * Are there any trends?
 * Conversation on where the Northern Tier wants to go with the data
 * What data to use and how it is to be tracked?
 * Data should have meaning if it is to be collected
 * Wednesday (September 29, 2010) meeting - have some ideas of what direction the Northern Tier should take
 * Recommendation from Data team
 * Horizontal bar graph of Northern Tier data (below, meets, exceeds, combination of meets and exceeds)

What questions do you have about NeSA data?

Table of Specificaitons:
 * NDE Homepage (www.education.ne.gov)
 * Assessment page - access frequently
 * scroll down left hand side and click "District Assessment"
 * Table of Specificaiton
 * NeSA-R
 * standards in red on Specs will be on the test
 * DOK (Depth of Knowledge)
 * DOK Level - level at which most of the questions will be taken

Robert: posed a question to the group of what data can be compared as a Northern Tier compared to the State Becky shared: NeSA-R by Nebraska Standards, which school districts were high or low in a standard (instructional decisions)

Questions will change, but the type of questions (from a standard point of view) will not change Table of Specs will change from year to year