The 2005-2006 school year is the start of Dr. Kenneth Eastwood’s’ second year of tenure as superintendent in the Enlarged City School District of Middletown (ECSDM). During the first year of his leadership, Dr. Eastwood enlisted the support of outside consultants to review the district’s curriculum and state achievement results. For middle school students writing was identified as a key area of under performance. As a result, ECSDM has developed a schedule for middle school students in grades six and seven to have a period of Literacy in addition to the regular English Language Arts period. The English Language Arts and the Literacy courses will be in addition to the Comprehensive Educational reading services for those students who qualify by attaining Level 1 on the New York State assessment. Students not meeting State Standards in ELA in 7th grade will continue to receive this additional period in addition to their English Language Arts instruction in grade 8 along with Comprehensive Education services in reading. The focus of the Literacy course is to fill in the gaps in literacy instruction not taught and assessed during the English Language Arts period.

Learning Effects has undertaken a long-term relationship with the district to provide professional development for teachers and data on student performance, as part of a comprehensive approach to improving writing. Incorporated into the district’s quarterly assessment program, students will take writing prompts modeled after the newly revised New York state test during the fall and winter of the school year.

For the launch of our program in the fall of 2005, teacher leaders from the middle school participated in a benchmarking workshop where range-finder papers were selected. Then all middle school literacy and English teachers participated in training and the scoring of student essays. Also included were the reading comprehensive education teachers for grades K-8. Because our scoring is facilitated electronically, teachers were able to score student work anonymously. Two weeks following the scoring teachers accessed their students’ scores and actual papers in our online environment.

There was enormous teacher enthusiasm about the LE program for two basic reasons. The results will give teachers a good projection of how well their students will do in the winter on state tests. Because teachers better understand the criteria and scoring process, it will be clear where they need to provide additional instruction for each student to achieve proficiency in the winter assessment as well as focus writing instruction throughout the year.

"This is the best kind of professional development for teachers because each teacher can walk away with an understanding of patterns of student strengths and weaknesses that can be used to drive instruction immediately upon entering the classroom. Teachers now have the ability to differentiate their instruction base on these patterns. In making decisions about their own professional growth, teachers can search out opportunities to grow professional in instructional areas that are needed by their students as determined by the data at which the teacher is not currently an expert. The data can also help us as a district make informed programmatic decisions that will inform the content of instruction, the resources used to provided instruction, the pacing of instruction, and the horizontal alignment of instruction across the English Language, the Literacy instruction, and the Comprehensive Education in reading to support the academic success of students in writing, as well as the vertical alignment across the grades 6-8. We are currently investigating ways to use this same kind of professional development for teachers and data to drive instruction in the intermediate grades as well as in the high school," stated Dr. Darlene McDonough, Director of Elementary Education in the ECSDM.

LE will be coordinating its efforts with other professional development offerings in ECSDM, so we are part of a seamless approach to improving student writing. Additionally, fall and spring data will be analyzed to document program effectiveness.

Since 2001, Learning Effects has enjoyed a highly successful and mutually beneficial relationship with the Cleveland Municipal School District (CMSD). Working in partnership with CMSD's Office of Professional Development, Learning Effects has administered performance assessments accompanied by teacher training programs in writing, reading, mathematics and science. To date, over 2,500 CMSD teachers and 75,000 students, across grades 3 - 10, have participated in our programs.

As a result of this work, we have created an electronic assessment library for CMSD containing in excess of 100 fully-documented, performance tasks aligned to local and state standards. This important and constantly growing resource is available to CMSD teachers to further standards-based instruction and assessment in their classrooms.

Sherry Ulery, CMSD's Executive Director of Professional Development, states, "Learning Effects staff is knowledgeable and responsive and their technology enables CMSD to score and receive achievement results in record time. We anticipate a continuing relationship with Learning Effects, as their program is a powerful method for our district to support teachers and improve student achievement."

Beginning in 2003, Learning Effects has engaged the Center for Research in Educational Policy (CREP) from the University of Memphis, under the direction of Dr. Steven Ross, to undertake a multi-year study tracking the student achievement impact of our work in Cleveland. The initial results indicate a positive correlation and the research is ongoing.

For more information on performance assessment-based professional development programs, contact info@learningeffects.com

In May 2004, Learning Effects partnered with Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) to pilot an online writing assessment for students across eight grade levels in Sanford Public Schools. Writing prompts were administered electronically and students entered typed responses on both MAC and PC computers. The results were scored and reported on Learning Effects' web-based, performance assessment management platform.

According to Jan Goldsberry, Curriculum Director for Sanford Public Schools, "The program exceeded all our expectations in terms of the positive experience it provided for students and the timely reporting of results for teachers. We found it to be an efficient and effective solution for addressing Maine Learning Results writing standards and one that closely resembles our high stakes testing (MEA) environment. This is far superior to paper and pencil assessment and we look forward to conducting full-scale writing assessments using this technology in the future."

Sanford students that participated in the pilot expressed similar sentiments. Ninety two percent (92%) of students tested in grades 6 and higher preferred the computer-based writing assessment to conventional paper and pencil writing tests. A significant majority (74%) of these same students reported that using keyboards to complete extended writing responses was faster and easier to edit than paper and pencil submissions.

For more information on the Sanford pilot project and bringing online assessments to your school, contact info@learningeffects.com

In the spring of 2005, Learning Effects and NWEA conducted Phase Two of the PC-based Writing Assessment Pilot across multiple school districts and grades in Maine and New Hampshire. In total, over 1,000 students from 3 districts, across four grades (5-8) participated in the project. Implementing the technology across multiple districts and states extended the parameters of the first pilot while providing a more realistic and diverse test environment for the project. In the end, all of the target dates for testing, scoring and data delivery were successfully achieved and feedback from participants was highly supportive and informative for future product development.

Further, Learning Effects and representatives of Sanford Public Schools jointly presented the results of the pilot project at NWEA’s Annual Member Conference in Portland, OR in June 2005. The session was extremely well received at the Conference and the PC-based Writing Assessment program will be expanding to new states and districts in the near future.