I strongly agree with using the official GED tests in combination with a passing GED exam score as acceptable pre & post tests. The CASAS reading and math tests can give an iinstructor a general sense of the students entry capabilities in those areas, but we have found that giving the learners the official practice tests is much more relevent to assisting the learners in establishing individual plans and goals for improving in the specific GED test areas.
   
  We attempt to meet the cretieria of the CASAS post tests by offering students a discount on the GED test fees, if they receive the recommendation of their instructor to take the test (of course the recommendation requires that they complete the CASAS post tests).
   
  Dave Williams
  Beaumont, CA

"Schneider, Jim" <jschneider at eicc.edu> wrote:
  As was mentioned in another message the CASAS post-test must be
administered to register any learning gain for NRS reporting. 

There is a movement to recognize the official practice tests and GED
test scores as an acceptable pre & post-test measure for the NRS which
would make INFINITELY more sense for those individuals who are focused
on attaining the GED and prevent the current over-assessment nonsense
that must be undertaken for programs to document the progress and
accountability of their efforts. 

Jim Schneider
Davenport, IA 

-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of
specialtopics-request at nifl.gov
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 5:14 PM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: SpecialTopics Digest, Vol 23, Issue 28

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Today's Topics:

1. [SpecialTopics 1021] Re: Content Standards: More questions,
more answers, more discussion-TM (Rinderknecht, Gail A.)
2. [SpecialTopics 1022] Standards - Response to Questions by
Allan French (Anderson, Philip)
3. [SpecialTopics 1023] Re: Content Standards: More questions,
more answers, more discussion-TM (Rantapaa Linnell L)
4. [SpecialTopics 1024] Re: Content Standards: More questions,
more answers, more discussion (Rinderknecht, Gail A.)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:40:44 -0500
From: "Rinderknecht, Gail A." 
Subject: [SpecialTopics 1021] Re: Content Standards: More questions,
more answers, more discussion-TM
To: 
Message-ID:


Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

We are in the process of doing just that. Evidently "they" do not think
it is irrelevant. They want it for statistical purposes to show growth
when the GED is completed.


-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Nancy Markus
Sent: Thu 6/19/2008 11:20 AM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 1019] Re: Content Standards: More questions,more
answers, more discussion-TM

Why not contact your state leadership and ask why the CASAS is required?
If
it really is irrelevant then advocate for change.

Nancy


On 6/19/08, Rinderknecht, Gail A. wrote:

>

> We use TABE to determine the 6.0 grade level for the Dept. of

> Corrections. It's quick, easy and non-threatening.

>

> The CASAS is required by the State Department of Education. No one

seems

> to know the rationale for requiring the students to take the CASAS

after

> completing their GED. It's one of those mandated things that happens

when

> the State is instituting "Standards". None of the GED teachers that I

know

> of like the idea, but at the same time we are required to re-CASAS. I

> suppose it is supposed to show growth in the reading and math, but as

I said

> before, most of the men do not see a reason to try very hard on this

test

> and just view it as another hoop that they are required to jump

through.

>

> Gail Rinderknecht

> garinderknecht at dmacc.edu

>

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Kelsee Miller

> Sent: Thu 6/19/2008 9:41 AM

> To: specialtopics at nifl.gov

> Subject: [SpecialTopics 1013] Re: Content Standards: More

questions,more

> answers, more discussion-TM

>

> Question for Gail: Why does your state use both the TABE and CASAS?

What is

> the rationale for testing CASAS again after the GED?

>

> I have found this discussion very insightful!

> Thank you,

> Kelsee

>

>

>

> Kelsee Miller

> Casper College

> Adult Basic Education/GED Instructor

> 125 College Dr.

> Casper, WY 82601

> 307-268-2895

> 307-268-2230

>

>

> -------------------------------

> National Institute for Literacy

> Special Topics mailing list

> SpecialTopics at nifl.gov

> To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to

> http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/SpecialTopics

> Email delivered to garinderknecht at dmacc.edu

>

>

> -------------------------------

> National Institute for Literacy

> Special Topics mailing list

> SpecialTopics at nifl.gov

> To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to

> http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/SpecialTopics

> Email delivered to nancy.markus at gmail.com

>

>


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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:37:21 -0400
From: "Anderson, Philip" 

Subject: [SpecialTopics 1022] Standards - Response to Questions by
Allan French
To: 
Message-ID: <96E135649F1AD048AA6FF8CBC598C23E18E1E761 at MAIL1.FLDOE.INT>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

This is a response from Phil Anderson, Florida DOE Adult Education
Program Specialist to the questions posed by Allan French, ESL
Instructor, Assessment Coordinator, Norming Project Coordinator at South
Seattle Community College:



This statement made by Allan resonates strongly: "The new state
standards were brought into the project to inform and suggest
(especially in terms of language), not to limit and control." This is
the intention of Florida's standards as well.



Allan's questions: "I see standards as not just a guideline for a
lesson, but a destination (after all, they define what we expect our
students to know and be able to do as they exit a particular level). I
am concerned with how we get to that destination, especially given the
multitude of standards and indicators, the need for multiple types of
assessment, and the time limitations. So I would like to ask all of you
out there who have worked some time with standards, (1) how do you
determine that a student is ready for the next level of an integrated
ESL class, using standards? 



Florida has several adult ESOL courses that are funded only with state
dollars, and are not reported to the NRS. Literacy Skills for the Adult
ESOL Learner is one of these. In 1999-2000, this course was developed by
a group of adult ESOL experts that included a University of Florida
researcher in adult ESOL literacy, Dr. Edwidge Crevecoeur-Bryant,
consultants with years of adult education experience in Florida,
teachers, and Dr. Edwina Hoffman, a Miami-Dade program administrator of
refugee programs. This course is designed for students that have low
levels of education and literacy in their home language(s). Most
students are Haitian, or from various language groups in Mexico and
Central America, such as Mixteco, Tarasco, Quechua, and Kanjobal. This
course has been put through implementation and revision stages in
several schools around the state, and it has been tweaked almost yearly
since its inception. It has a set of benchmarks that are divided into
three levels, A, B, C. Last year, the state database shows that 13,794
students were enrolled in this course. We developed a "User Guide" for
this course to explain to teachers how it is used and suggestions on how
to teach the course. Documents related to this course can be found on
the Florida Adult Education website,
http://www.fldoe.org/workforce/adult_ed.asp. 



(2) How do you determine what constitutes satisfactory performance of
any one standard/indicator, and that such performance has in fact been
achieved? 

For the present, the only method the state prescribes is that the
teacher of the course and the program administrator must sign off on a
state-created "Progress Report" that indicates the student has
"satisfactorily" mastered the benchmarks shown in the Progress in the
standards. What is deemed "satisfactory" is left up to those two
persons, the teacher and the program administrator. The state expects
local programs to establish a written procedure for how the teachers
will determine progress, i.e., portfolio, teacher-designed tests,
textbook tests, worksheet samples, documentation of group projects, etc.
After the teacher and administrator sign off on the student's Progress
Report, the program sends notification to the state that the student
mastered the standards. The state then records this in its database and
assigns payment to the program accordingly. The local program is
required to retain the records showing documentation of the progress
report for auditing purposes. The state sends out monitors to all
programs to check on the documentation of the progress reports. Since
the Florida legislature funds this course through its adult education
funding, the FL DOE, for now, uses this method of holding the program to
a certain level of accountability. 



(3) How do you create the assessment tools to evaluate said performance?

The state is in the process of exploring the development of a
standardized procedure/assessment that can give us a reliable and valid
way of measuring progress on the course standards. Hopefully within the
next two years, this standardized procedure/assessment will be ready for
use. 



(4) Can you cover all standards/indicators for the level in a single
quarter or how much time is needed? Another way of asking this is how
do you grapple with the, at times, mind-boggling complexity of all that
we are endeavoring to do.

Since the standards are "to inform and to suggest," teachers are not
expected to cover 100% of the standards within an instructional period
of time, but to judiciously select those that are relevant. Maxine
McCormick, a Florida trainer, often exhorts us, "Take your students to
MMU! Teach them what is meaningful, memorable and useful!" Several
Florida programs are piloting short terms of 8 weeks in a "managed
enrollment" system with some of their classes. In these classes,
students are assigned to a class by level, the class is "closed" after
the second week, and kept at 25 students maximum. The first week is
assigned to orientation topics (how to study, what the students want to
cover in the course from a list of suggested topics from the standards,
the teacher's methods), and the last week is assigned to testing. No
teacher can teach all the benchmarks in 8 weeks, but the intention of
the "managed enrollment" classes is to meet the needs of students who
desire to achieve competency in work and life skill areas more
efficiently and effectively that in the "open entry - open exit"
classes. So far, evaluations of these classes is showing that students
and teachers are satisfied with the results. The project in Miami Dade
School District is called "Intensive English Academies" and can be
reviewed at the Florida Adult ESOL task force website,
www.floridaadultesol.org . Look for
the pencil under "New Initiatives."





CONTACT INFORMATION

Philip Anderson

Adult ESOL Program Specialist

Division of Workforce Education

Florida Department of Education

325 W. Gaines Street, Room 644

Tallahassee, FL 32399

Tel (850) 245-9450

Fax (850) 245-0995


Please take a few minutes to provide feedback on the quality of service
you received from our staff. The Department of Education values your
feedback as a customer. Commissioner of Education Dr. Eric J. Smith is
committed to continuously assessing and improving the level and quality
of services provided to you.Simply use the link below. Thank you in
advance for completing the survey.


http://data.fldoe.org/cs/default.cfm?staff=Philip.Anderson@fldoe.org|12:
37:22%20Thu%2019%20Jun%202008
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------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:53:05 -0700
From: "Rantapaa Linnell L" 

Subject: [SpecialTopics 1023] Re: Content Standards: More questions,
more answers, more discussion-TM
To: 
Message-ID:

<286FDFA48BE5AF4CA0641A8AE10A9B047044B8 at docmail4.ds.doc.state.or.us>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

CASAS postesting was required after the Feds via the Title II National
Reporting System did not allow an official GED test to proxy for a
posttest to measure skill level gains. Progress on the NRS "Educational
Gain" performance must be measureed by a pre and posttest of the same
type. If GED completers are not posttested they have no "opportunity" to
demonstrate progress on this performance measure. In Oregon, we have
the same difficulties getting valid posttest results from those who have
already completed the GED. We try to catch them before they take their
last GED test, but it's a struggle. 


Linnell
Phone: 503-934-1006
Fax: 503-378-5815


-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Rinderknecht, Gail
A.
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 9:14 AM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: RE: [SpecialTopics 1013] Re: Content Standards: More
questions,more answers, more discussion-TM


We use TABE to determine the 6.0 grade level for the Dept. of
Corrections. It's quick, easy and non-threatening.

The CASAS is required by the State Department of Education. No one
seems to know the rationale for requiring the students to take the CASAS
after completing their GED. It's one of those mandated things that
happens when the State is instituting "Standards". None of the GED
teachers that I know of like the idea, but at the same time we are
required to re-CASAS. I suppose it is supposed to show growth in the
reading and math, but as I said before, most of the men do not see a
reason to try very hard on this test and just view it as another hoop
that they are required to jump through. 

Gail Rinderknecht
garinderknecht at dmacc.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Kelsee Miller
Sent: Thu 6/19/2008 9:41 AM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 1013] Re: Content Standards: More
questions,more answers, more discussion-TM

Question for Gail: Why does your state use both the TABE and CASAS? What
is the rationale for testing CASAS again after the GED?

I have found this discussion very insightful!
Thank you,
Kelsee



Kelsee Miller
Casper College
Adult Basic Education/GED Instructor
125 College Dr. 
Casper, WY 82601
307-268-2895
307-268-2230


-------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Special Topics mailing list
SpecialTopics at nifl.gov
To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/SpecialTopics
Email delivered to garinderknecht at dmacc.edu



------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:22:30 -0500
From: "Rinderknecht, Gail A." 
Subject: [SpecialTopics 1024] Re: Content Standards: More questions,
more answers, more discussion
To: 
Message-ID:


Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

You decry the use of rewards, but for kids to take a test seriously,
they need a reward. In regular classes, the reward is a grade. They
often need something tangible to strive for other than the test score.
Standardized tests do not provide a reward for someone who is not
internally motivated. Even if the reward is "real pizza" for lunch
instead of the school pizza or passes to the local movie theater, it may
be enough to motivate some students to take the test more seriously than
they otherwise would have.

Gail


-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Federico Salas
Sent: Thu 6/19/2008 9:02 AM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 1010] Re: Content Standards: More questions,more
answers, more discussion

To me the obvious problem with rewarding results on the test is that you
are teaching test taking skills. Then the standard is determined by the
test, not by your instructional content standards as determined by
students and colleagues. Students may have a phenomenal passing rate on
the test but be completely unable to actually use their skills and in a
practical application at work or as tap their knowledge base as a
springboard to learn more at college or the university. Then programs
that "offer rewards for improved test scores" have improved test scores
but have they improved the proficiency of those test takers in their
ability to succeed in life? I am afraid not. That is one of the most
insidious problems of public education today. Schools are ranked and
rewarded on the performance of their students on standardized tests but
nobody pays attention to whether the students have really learned their
materials or simply learned to ace a test. I believe the issue is with
making the standardized test the focus of education. If we focused on
the content standards for instruction instead our success rate would
over time improve. 

To me, focusing on the test is warranted only when the student has
obtained sufficient command of the skills and knowledge and a few weeks
before the test you pay attention to the form of the test, test
strategies, etc. But to devote your adult education program to the test
skills rather than teach with a carefully considered set of academic and
work related standards is a true disservice to our students.

You should know I am an avowed enemy of standardized tests; I don't
understand them, I don't like them, and I don't believe the scores tell
us much about a student. I also don't believe we are going to fix any
of the problems in education if we continue focusing on "the test"
instead of teaching. Of course I went through my whole elementary,
secondary, and a couple of years of university work in two other
countries without ever once facing a standardized test. Tests of my
ability to explain scientific facts, yes; tests of my ability to relate
knowledge from one field to knowledge from another, yes. Tests that
asked me to look for evidence in XX century culture of events that
happened in the renaissance, yes. But standardized tests? The first
standardized test I ever took was the TOEFL to come to this country. But
that's another story...

federico



Federico Salas-Isnardi, Assistant State Director
Texas LEARNS
6005 Westview Dr.
Houston, TX 77055
Direct: 713-696-0719
Toll Free: 866-696-4233
Fax: 713-696-0797

The State Office of Adult Education and Family Literacy
-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Rinderknecht, Gail
A.
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 7:56 PM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: RE: [SpecialTopics 996] Content Standards: More questions, more
answers,more discussion

So I knew I shouldn't have started writing in response to this topic
because I have such strong opinions about the matter. 

Iowa has instituted standards and benchmarks in the public schools and
tests the daylights out of the students. Personally, I believe that the
success of the test often relies on the attitude of the teacher giving
the test. I can see this in the high school where I used to teach when
I volunteer to read high school essays in the summer to evaluate
reading. The teachers whom I know emphasize the importance of the test
have much better results than the teacher who says, "Hey, we have to do
this. I don't like it. You don't like it, Your parents don't like it.
Just do it and get it over with." Schools that offer rewards for
improved test scores have improved test scores. There are many
variables when doing any kind of standardized testing to "evaluate
teaching results". And as far as getting the federal government

=== message truncated ===
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