Monitor Extent of Student Mastery of Standards
Standards based assessments are those that provide formative data on the degree to which students are demonstrating understanding or mastery of the skills they are expected to learn at each grade. Many states have recently rolled out new standards for each grade. These standards raise the bar for instruction and require students to learn skills that are more challenging because they involve deeper understanding and more advanced knowledge than have been required in the past.
iSTEEP has developed new standards based assessments that are standards aligned. Since many publishers also say their assessments are aligned to the new standards, iSTEEP took the additional step of having our literacy assessments reviewed by a non-biased government agency.
The Louisiana Department of Education conducted a rigorous review of most major assessments and iSTEEP was one of only two that were awarded the highest designation, Tier 1 —
Exemplifies quality: Meets all non-negotiable criteria and scored the best possible score on all indicators of superior quality.
The new standards based assessments contain new skills and require assessment to be conducted using specific methods. The iSTEEP Advanced Literacy Assessment assesses comprehension of literature and informational passages using a fully automated process. The literature assessment includes works from masters such as Tolstoy, Poe, etc. Foundational literacy skills are also assessed with various assessments.
The Advanced Numeracy assessment includes various tasks that tap student understanding and application of important math skills. We also have foundational math measures for skills such as compare numbers (quantity discrimination), finding unknown number, expanded form, place value as well as various computational skills.
Advanced Literacy
iSTEEP Receives Top Rating and Awarded Tier 1 Status
We are pleased to announce that an independent review of assessments was conducted by the Louisiana Department of Education who recognized the iSTEEP Advanced Literacy Assessment as a Tier 1 status indicating the assessment was awarded the best possible score for "all indicators of superior quality."
Advanced Literacy Assessment
- Includes both literature and informational passages.
- Literature Worth Reading from Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and other masters.
- Informational text in a variety of areas such biography, history, science, American government.
- Standards Aligned.
- Staircase of Increasing Complexity.
- Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of Each Text.
- Each text evaluated using 3 indicators of text complexity
- Rigorous text based questions requiring students to read and think about the text.
- Texts are 50% literature and 50% informational.
Smart Cloze
- Computer based assessment that includes not only comprehension but also vocabulary, language, grammar, and usage.
- Quick and efficient check on student progress toward ELA standards.
Advanced Numeracy
Elementary Super Standards*
- Counting and Cardinality
- Operations and Algebraic Thinking
- Number & Operations in Base Ten
- Number & Operations - Fractions
- Measurement & Data
Middle School Super Standards*
- Ratios and Proportional Relationships
- The Number System
- Expressions & Equations
High School Super Standards*
- Seeing Structure in Expressions
- Arithmetic with Polynomials & Rational Expressions
- Creating Equations*
- Reasoning with Equations and Inequalities
- Functions
High School: Algebra
- Introduction
- Seeing Structure in Expressions
- Arithmetic with Polynomials and Rational expressions
- Creating Equations*
- Reasoning with Equations and Inequalities
- High School: Functions
*Super standards, which are also referred to as the major work of the grade, are those standards which are important for the grade but also serve as a foundation for skills in subsequent grades.
Uses of Standards Based Assessments
- Screening and Benchmarking to know if your students are ready for standards-based State Assessments such as PARRC and Smarter-Balanced
- Helps with transition to standards from other types of assessments
If Students are Not Ready, STEEP helps with getting them ready
- Student diagnostics
- Intervention Recommendations
- Reporting
- Progress Monitoring