Smarter Balanced: Upcoming call for teachers for summer work

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is committed to teacher involvement in the development of the assessment system.


Michigan's Bureau of Assessment and Accountability (BAA) will soon appoint a state-level “teacher involvement coordinator.” This person will serve as the point of contact for recruiting teachers for development and research opportunities. We should all hear from our newly-appointed teacher involvement coordinator within the next couple of weeks.


Here are the latest highlights of upcoming opportunities for teachers to be involved in the work of Smarter Balanced - THIS summer.  

1. Within the month, the teacher involvement coordinator will begin to recruit teachers for summer work to develop and review assessment items and tasks.
2. Recruited teachers will attend training sessions and work online in small groups to develop items and tasks. 
3. Teachers and other educational experts will then review all of the materials for content, bias and sensitivity, and accessibility. 

All of this work will take place THIS summer.


This fall, designated teachers at participating schools will be trained to administer trial assessments to students in their classrooms as part of Smarter Balanced's detailed analysis of how students interact with new item and task formats. 


Additional opportunities for teachers will be offered through independent item reviews, and this fall teachers will also be able to participate in rigorous item review workshops using their experience and content expertise. 


Finally, this fall Smarter Balanced intends to send out an “all call” to classroom teachers across the Consortium, inviting teachers to volunteer to participate in our pilot testing in spring 2013. 


What can you do to stay in the loop? Stay tuned and subscribe to Minds on Mathematics to get the most current, publicly available information.