Mississippi Educators Create 100,000th Assessment Test Item through Vantage Learning

Using the MS Student Progress Monitoring System® from Vantage Learning, teachers across MS have created custom test items since 2004

Ewing, NJ (Vocus) May 18, 2010

Six years after the Mississippi Department of Education selected Vantage Learning to deliver its statewide formative assessment and student progress monitoring system, MS educators have created their 100,000th user-developed test item aligned to the Mississippi Curriculum Frameworks and delivered through the online MS-SPMS system.

“This is a significant milestone for Mississippi as well as for Vantage,” said Paul Edelblut, Vice President of Vantage Learning. “One of the benefits that the Vantage Student Progress Monitoring System (SPMS®) provides is a process for educators' created assessment items, whereby teachers can share their own items for review, discussion, and approval, to ensure high-quality, meaningful additions to the SPMS assessment bank before they are used on student assessments. We have been proud to work with the Mississippi educational community for the better part of a decade. In fact, over half of the assessment items available in SPMS were created by educators in the state, which is part of our commitment to enhance the educational experience for the students, parents, teachers, and administrators in Mississippi.”

The SPMS incorporates the Vantage Learning Platform™, an integrated set of tools for the development and delivery of assessment information, and IntelliMetric®, the gold standard in automated scoring that instantly scores student writing with accuracy that equals or exceeds that of expert human scoring. The SPMS application on top of the core technology platform delivers a flexible, dynamic tool that helps teachers create, administer, score, and report student assessments, and works across grade levels to provide immediate, individualized diagnostic feedback for all students.

    Additional Features of the MS-SPMS Platform Include:

•     Performance assessment tracking that compiles results from external subject tests—such as Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS™), Mississippi Curriculum Tests (MCT), and Subject Area Testing Program (SATP) state practice tests into a single, easily accessible student portfolio.
•     Answerworks™, Vantage’s proprietary search technology that finds better answers faster, by using the program’s natural language understanding to improve search results and increase their relevance.
•     3-in-1 bubble sheets that accommodate Mississippi's continued use of paper-and-pencil tests (as opposed to pure online testing), by combining several different paper-and-pencil tests on one sheet to reduce paper costs.
•     Practice Mississippi Curriculum Tests and Science Subject Tests that expose students to the format and style of the state tests, and helps them better prepare for the real event.
•     Curriculum, Assessment, and Instruction (CAI) training and other specialized curriculum modules available to teachers to enhance their professional development. One highlight is the Resources/Tools module, where educators can search for, create, and share teaching resources such as lesson plans, learning activities, templates, and forms.
•     Webb Cognitive Levels that provide educators the opportunity to select items at varying difficulty levels even within a single grade level.

ABOUT VANTAGE LEARNING

A pioneer in delivering Software as a Service (SaaS), Vantage Learning provides accountability solutions for student achievement and school improvement. Among our solutions is the Student Progress Monitoring System® (SPMS®), a web-based system for conducting frequent, ongoing diagnostic assessments of student skills in reading, math, science, social studies, and writing. Users of SPMS can create, administer and score paper-based or online assessments of core academic skills and receive timely, accurate results on student progress. In turn, educators can use this data to focus instruction where it is needed most.

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