New Jersey’s Standards-Based Assessments

Content of the Standards-Based Assessments

New Jersey’s standards-based assessments have been developed to assess each student’s progress in learning the knowledge and skills embodied in the CCCS at grades 3 to 8 and grade 11. During the 2005 - 2006 school year, New Jersey utilized the following assessments:

• 3^rd  grade - (NJ-ASK 3),

• 4^th grade - (NJ-ASK 4),

• 5th grade - (NJ-ASK 5),

• 6th grade - (NJ-ASK 6),

• 7th grade - (NJ-ASK 7),

• 8^th grade - (GEPA), and

• 11^th grade - (HSPA)

* NOTE - The names, content, and format of these assessments will be changed during the 2006 - 2007 school year; however, they will continue to be aligned with the CCCS.

These state assessments can be utilized to identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses in learning the state’s standards. However, in addition to the content, each student’s performance on these assessments may be influenced by their format. Therefore, each student’s strengths and weaknesses on the various formats should be identified and subsequently integrated into lesson plans and school-based interventions, if appropriate.

*Note - If a significant number of students are experiencing difficulties on a particular assessment, more systemic interventions may be required (e.g., district curriculum revisions, district &/or school-based staff development, etc.).

The attached link (example of analysis) provides guidance on how to utilize the individual student’s reports up until the 2005 - 2006 school year to analyze each student’s performance on leaning the state’s standards and to identify corresponding strengths and weaknesses.

Format of the Standards-Based Assessments

Each student’s performance on New Jersey’s standards-based assessments is predicated on his/her strengths & weaknesses on the content and format of these assessments. Therefore, stakeholders must be familiar with the format of these assessments and how individual students perform on tests using these formats. This will help identify additional weaknesses that require further interventions and/or test accommodations.

All sections are time-delineated; therefore speed and pacing are critical skills. Each section also utilizes two types of questions - Multiple choice, where student must choose one correct answer from 4 choices; and Open-ended questions, where students answer with short or long written responses. The open-ended questions allow students to utilize their own words &/or diagrams, graphics, or pictures to respond. The quality a of student’s responses to open-ended questions are evaluated with scoring rubrics for respective subjects/tasks. The NJDOE utilizes scoring rubrics to assess students’ performance on open-ended questions based on established criteria. Consequently, when students experience difficulties with open-ended questions, subsequent interventions may need to ensure that students are taught the rubrics, provided with guided instruction on utilizing the rubrics, and given multiple experiences with these rubrics.

Language Arts Literacy – Format and Content

The Language Arts Literacy (LAL) sections are broken into reading and writing sections. All LAL assessments assess student's knowledge and skills utilizing reading & writing tasks that require students to work with or interpret text; analyze/critique text; & extend understanding of text.

The reading sections provide a variety of passages (e.g., stories and texts) that give information or directions for doing a task. The narrative text is written primarily to tell a story with a strong thematic focus, follows a traditional narrative structure, and contains traditional narrative elements. The informational text conveys information and seeks to extend understanding of these texts.  The reading passages are followed by multiple-choice and open-ended questions that are scored utilizing the Reading Open-Ended Scoring Rubric.

The writing sections require students to write short passages in response to different types of prompts (e.g., pictures, poems, and persuasive prompts). The writing tasks require students to construct meaning in sustained written responses.  Most require the student to write a paragraph or more in response to the prompt. They utilize the 0 to 6 point New Jersey Registered Holistic Scoring Rubric to score the students' responses. The student can take notes, create a web, or do the prewriting work in the space provided. However, the actual writing must occur on the lines provided.

Writer’s Checklist

On all assessments, the students are provided with a copy of the "Writer's Checklist" that provides important points to remember as writing: 

Remember to

- Keep the central idea or topic in mind.

- Keep your audience in mind.

- Support your ideas with details, explanations, and examples.

- State your ideas in a clear sequence.

- Include and opening and a closing.

- Use a variety of words and vary your sentence structure.

- State your opinion or conclusion clearly.

- Capitalize, spell, and use punctuation clearly.

- Write neatly.

 Mathematics - Content & Format

The Math sections assess student's knowledge and skills in numbers, numerical operations, geometry and measurement, patterns and algebra, data analysis, probability, and discrete mathematics, and mathematical process. 

For various parts of the math section, students can use a calculator & they are provided with a math reference sheet with formulas and other useful math information.

There are both multiple-choice and open-ended questions on the mathematics sections. Most of the questions are multiple-choice, where the student chooses the best answer from among 4 choices and darkens in the circle of the correct choice. Each correct answer has a weight of one point. For the open-ended questions, the student writes and/or draws their answers to these questions in the spaces provided in the test booklet. The open-ended questions are scored with generic New Jersey Registered Holistic Scoring Rubric for math that gives 0 to 3 points for each answer. The generic rubric helps ensure that students are scored in the same way for the same demonstration of knowledge and skills regardless of the test question. The open-ended questions require students to construct and explain their own written or graphic responses. Since partial credit can be earned, it’s critical that students show their work and explain their answers.

Test Accommodations

In addition, because of a special education student’s disabling condition, they may experience problems with the content and format of the state’s standards-based assessments. Therefore, there is an array of state-approved test accommodations, which should be considered when developing IEPs and subsequently provided on the state’s and district’s assessments.

 Limitations of Test Results on Standards-Based Assessments

The NJDOE only provides a cluster analysis, instead of an item analysis, of how individual students perform on the content embodied in these assessments. Consequently, this broad perspective must be narrowed down to identify each student's strengths and weaknesses in the knowledge and skills embodied in the "cluster" scores. The following tools may be utilized by teachers, parents, administrators, students, school-based intervention teams, and IEP teams to supplement these standards-based assessment results and identify the specific knowledge and skills, which may be difficult for individual &/or groups of students and subsequently intervene effectively to address these academic weaknesses: 

1.     District assessments,

2.     Teachers’ reports of class work, homework, cumulative records, parental input, etc., and

3.   CPI checklists – where stakeholders can identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses for the corresponding grades of the standards-based assessments, utilizing an array of sources, including those listed above.

 

Utilizing NTU's CPI checklists better ensures an alignment with the general education curriculum and state standards, as recommended by the Access Center in this hyperlinked brief.