One fellow adult ed administrator/blogger emailed me this question today:
How does your site obtain paired scores for your students?
I emailed him with the steps we take at NMUSD Adult School to get as many CASAS paired scores as possible…plus 5 resources to help with the process. We hope these ideas are helpful. Good luck, all!
Thanks for checking out our blog! We hope it is helpful to you and your school.
Obtaining paired scores is the perennial challenge with our transient clientele in adult education! I don’t know if I have any better solution than anyone else. But, here’s what we do at NMUSD Adult School:
1. CASAS pretest in all classes – administered by teachers – on second week of semester.
2. Ongoing makeup testing administered by office staff. Each week we provide our office assistants with the current list of students who need to be tested. Our assistants go into the rooms to collect students for makeup testing twice a week.
3. Ongoing pre-testing of new students administered by office staff at time of enrollment. (We are an open-enrollment school.)
4. CASAS Post-Test I in all our classes – administered by teachers – approx. 84 hours after the pretest for maximum benchmark attainment…but BEFORE Thanksgiving break so we won’t be impacted by vacation attrition. (See our Testing Calendar and then click back to return to this post.)
5. We return student scores PROMPTLY (one – two days after the student takes the test). Our teachers are trained on how to interpret the test results. CASAS Results Meeting PowerPoint
6. Students chart their progress on their Student Test Results and FAQs.
7. Ongoing makeup testing for the CASAS Post-Test I given by office staff.
8. CASAS Post-Test II before the semester ends – for all students who did not attain two benchmarks from our first testing cycle.
a. For students who earn 2 benchmarks, we give them a personalized Certificate of Achievement (click here for an example and then click on back to return to this post). We offer a bonus activity for these students to complete during the testing in class. It’s important that we celebrate their achievement!
Repeat for second semester. However, the pretest for second semester is only limited to those students who need a pretest or lack two benchmarks from last semester’s testing.
I hope this helps! Our best to you!!
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