As a governing state in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, Maine continues to support the efforts to develop a rigorous assessment system that will become operational in the 2014-15 school year. As part of those efforts, the Maine DOE is seeking the nomination of qualified educators, administrators, parents and business/community leaders to participate in the process to recommend cut scores for achievement levels on Smarter Balanced developed assessments.
This is a critical opportunity to collect input from a diverse group of stakeholders and establish consistent measures of progress for the Smarter Balanced interim and summative assessments.
The process for recommending student achievement levels will rely on the professional judgment and experience of panel members in order to develop performance standards that are rigorous, fair and accurate for Maine students. The recommendations from the in-person panel will be submitted for endorsement to the chief school officers in the governing states. The goal is to follow a process that is as inclusive as possible, is representative of views across member states, and is transparent and scientifically rigorous.
The in-person panel will allow for a group of more than 500 participants, nominated by states, to engage in a comprehensive review of questions from the assessments. The panel, to convene October 13–19 at a location to be determined, will offer participants the opportunity to review the difficulty of questions and define what students performing at each of the four achievement levels can reasonably be expected to answer correctly at each grade level. Selected panelists will each participate for three days of the panel.
Those interested in serving on the in-person panel should complete the contact information form no later than May 22.
For more information, please contact Maine DOE’s assessment program assistant Bethany Dodge at 207-624-6770 or bethany.l.dodge@maine.gov.