ACT - The New SC Assessment Provider?

UPDATED
Although it appeared that ACT Aspire had won the bid to become the new vendor of English language arts and mathematics assessments for grades 3-8 and high school in SC, DRC filed a protest on September 30. The award would be $58.4 million through 2019. Act 200 of 2014 required that the State withdraw from the SMARTER Balanced consortium (which Dr. Zais had already done) and select a new assessment by September 30.

DRC submitted the only other proposal. Rumor has it that the DRC proposal was at substantially lower cost. 

SC would become the second state (first being Alabama) to have statewide adoption of ACT.

In terms of educator evaluation, according to its website the ACT Aspire suite uses student growth percentiles, and can aggregate growth statistics. Meanwhile, the vendors who submitted proposals to do value added measures are making presentations this week. 

Stay tuned for more fun changes. 

SC may hold off use of test scores in evaluation?

Updated
On September 16, Alyson Klein of Politics K12 - Edweek published an blog on "Which NCLB Waiver States May Delay Using Test Scores in Teacher Evaluations?" In that day's version South Carolina was not mentioned other than as a state on the map at the bottom (the map is very helpful,

btw).
Then on September 17, the article showed as "UPDATED" and SC was listed here:

Seventeen states told Education Week that they are likely to ask for the flexibility, or were already planning to hold off on using test scores in evaluations, including: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah.

So the good news was that Dr. Zais is apparently thinking about applying for that additional flexibility.

But then on September 23, SC was moved to the "no-with an asterisk" category. "And South Carolina is a special case, in that the state uses multiple years of growth in student test scores."

So what could have been great news for SC educators is now back in limbo.  Keep sending those requests to Dr. Zais.

UPDATE: Dr. Zais did send in the request on October 2, 2014.

Revised Education Leader Standards

CCSSO and NPBEA have issued for public comment a draft of the refreshed education leader standards, aka "ISLLC." You can review the draft  and make comments between now and October 10. The press release is here.  

Weekend SLO Reading

SC educators - if you're not going to the USC-Georgia game tomorrow, you might want to browse through the SCDE's training materials on writing student learning objectives. Over 30 fun files chock full of information, including 12 sample SLOs.

District leaders - it includes checklists-worksheets for your planning and communication purposes.

You can find the entire package at:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BxMUlIE0XbmdY1paVG9JYXlYbkE&usp=sharing

Official Slow Down on SLOs

The SC Department of Education (SCDE) has received permission from the US Department of Education (USED) to delay until SY 15-16 the implementation of student learning objectives (SLOs) as the "student growth" piece of educator evaluation for "non-tested" grades and subjects. In her letter of August 21, Assistant Secretary Delisle indicated that USED was considering other flexibility on a state-by-state basis. The SCDE had requested the delay so that planning and training could be done in SY 14-15.

SCDE has not requested the other flexibility offered in that letter - the one year delay in using student test scores as the "student growth" measure in evaluation for those with "tested" grades and subjects.

The ESEA waiver originally required that both of these pieces be in place by the beginning of SY 14-15, i.e., right now. It's certainly a relief that SLOs are delayed. (The first official SCDE training starts September 11, 2014). Since we don't know what assessment will be given to students this spring (the law requires selection by September 30, 2014), it would make sense to request this other piece of flexibility. Value-added measures would still be calculated - they just would not be included in the "multiple years" of student growth used to evaluate teachers and principals. Only the State Superintendent is authorized to apply for this flexibility. Will he?