The content of the blog post below is adapted from our Science Updates Newsletter. Now that we’re in our pilot phase, we’re excited to start sharing regular updates about our exciting work on these assessments and pilots. Click here to subscribe to our science newsletter!
Why Science Assessments?
CenterPoint Education Solutions’ new science assessments usher in a new era of science education, serving as a catalyst for curiosity and critical thinking, and nurturing an enduring passion for exploration.
Precisely aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), our assessments breathe life into science education. By seamlessly interweaving the three dimensions of NGSS – disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts – our assessments bridge the gap between scientific theories and the tangible world, curating evidence of students’ growing sophistication in scientific thinking.
What’s Exciting About Our Science Assessments?
- Insights into Readiness for State Standardized Tests: Our assessment provides valuable insights into student readiness for state standardized tests, aiding in assessment and planning.
- Enhanced Transfer of Knowledge: Our assessment introduces close curricular tasks that align seamlessly with the highly rated OpenSciEd curriculum.
- Measurement of Growth and Development Over Time: Our assessment incorporates longitudinal tasks that provide an understanding of students’ growth and sophistication over grades 6,7, and 8. Students interact with phenomena, review previous work, and continually build or revise their thinking, giving educators insights into their evolving ideas.
- Insights Into Engagement and Motivation: Our assessment includes student experiential questions, collecting data on student perception and engagement in the science classroom.
- Actionable Reporting: We are diligently engineering the interim assessments to equip educators with rapid, real-time adjustments for their classrooms. Furthermore, these assessments facilitate asset-based discourse – spotlighting students’ strengths – among students, colleagues, and caregivers, fostering a collaborative educational
What’s New with Our Pilots?
This fall we began piloting our Interim Science Assessments in 25 middle schools across 6 states with over 5,000 students in grades 6-8. Students are interacting with 3 interims across the school year. Teachers administer the interim and participate in professional learning sessions to guide data and report interpretation and use.
We’ve been able to do multiple school visits since we’ve started piloting to better understand teachers’ and students’ experiences with the assessments and get feedback to help us continue iterating upon and improving the assessments.
Some things we’ve learned so far:
- Students like the variety of tasks on the assessments
- Teachers like being able to better understanding their students’ motivation and experiences in science classrooms with our student experiential questions
- Teachers like seeing examples of high quality three dimensional NGSS aligned assessment tasks.
We’re excited to continue working with our wonderful pilot schools and learning from their feedback and the data we get from their use of the assessments. Stay tuned for more insights as we get further in our pilot process!
Stay Connected: Join us on Our Journey!
- Explore our website to uncover insights into our science assessments – understanding their distinct qualities, innovative elements, and projected timeline. Recently we did a series of posts about our second pilot school visit!
- Visit our LinkedIn, and Twitter to see those exciting updates.
- Stay closely connected to our progress by subscribing to updates and newsletters, ensuring you receive firsthand accounts of our ongoing developments.