 Welcome to this week's edition of the Wednesday webinar. I'm Laura Leno-Keefe, staff developer here at ESU8, and we're going to discuss assessment literacy and why it's so important. I wanted to talk about, take some time to talk a little bit about the exciting changes that are taking place in statewide assessment. Being aware of these changes will help us become more assessment literate and be able to articulate the importance of each type of assessment to students, parents, and other stakeholders. There are a multitude of components of the Nebraska balanced assessment system. But do we really know what each of these are assessing? And do we know how we can best utilize the results from these assessments? The multiple measures provided by the NDE balanced assessment system are formative, interim, and summative assessments. This year, the Nebraska Department of Education is launching an innovative new statewide assessment system for grades three through eight. The system uses different types of assessment at different times to monitor classroom learning in the moment, track academic growth over time, and measure grade level achievement relative to Nebraska's academic standards. In the moment, resources are focused on two main processes, formative instructional practices and tools. So some of those instructional practices that you look at are the on the spot visual data that you collect in your classroom, the performance assessments that you collect and how you adjust your practices and strategies accordingly. Some of the two tools that are available are your teacher created tests and also test wiz is available through NWEA and NDE. This is formally the C4L. Formative measures and practices help us understand learning in the moment and include observational data as an essential component of balanced assessments. Growth assessments are adaptive, efficiently administered and individualized to each student, such as map growth, science tools, dibbles, and other forms of interim assessments. They're typically administered up to three times per year with the results made available quickly. Evidence reveals in-depth information about what students know and are ready to learn. Some of these tools are available now and some are in development here in Nebraska by Nebraska educators. The most common that you will hear of at this point is our NWEA map growth assessment. These interim assessments provide us with opportunity to look at growth over time and to measure progress against national norms for growth and performance. The new summative assessment, which focuses on providing information about where students are relative to the state standards, is now called the Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System, was formerly called NISA. This assessment will provide information on grade level achievement. It will be administered online and a portion of it will be adaptive and individualized to each student. The core content that will be assessed with the Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System or NSCAS are listed on the screen, but we also are looking at the summative assessment ACT being utilized at grade 11. If a summative assessment can be described as a digital snapshot, a formative assessment is like a streaming video. One is a picture of what a student knows that is captured in a single moment of time and the other is a moving picture that demonstrates active student learning and reasoning. So what are some opportunities to use multiple measures of assessment? Well, number one, it's a support of AQUEST strategic priority number five, which is to use assessments to measure and improve student achievement and to inform instruction. It aligns with accreditation and continuous improvement process such as the state frameworks and advanced ed. It aligns also with Marzano and Danielson frameworks. It has components of the Nebraska Literacy Program. It's the development of SLOs and Educator Effectiveness Strategies number four and number five, which include attention to using data to adjust instruction and the assessment practice. It also aligns with Nebraska's strategic ESSA plan. Five basic ways that this will change the culture of learning in our classroom is through engagement, mindset, practice, trust and structures. It will increase engagement with our students. They then change their mindset and become more of a growth mindset. They have more trust in the process because it is more goal centered. The practices that they do to achieve their goal changes the whole structure and classroom culture of learning when our students are assessment literate and also an increased assessment literacy among our teachers. So why does assessment literacy matter? It increases the equitability and ethical delivery of our instruction for our students. We look at aligning what our students need with what really we're giving them. And then we're measuring the growth at which what depth of learning is taking place. Again, it supports learning both in the short term and the long term, utilizing formative assessment to drive our instructional practices with immediate change, utilizing some of the interim and long term assessments or the summative assessments for long term change in maybe curriculum, maybe how we are teaching a particular subject or unit. It does take a growth mindset for our students as well as our teachers, our school districts to look at the data, make that data more actionable so that we aren't just collecting data for the sake of collecting data. We're actually putting it into practice to drive instruction and increase student learning. Thank you for taking the time today to watch the assessment literacy and why is it important Wednesday webinar. If you would like any assistance on NWEA map growth, applying reports, making student goals, setting student goals, ACT report reading and application, please don't hesitate to call us. Have a great day.