Interactive Achievement Teams Up with Measured Progress to Deliver Common Core Items and Assessments

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Measured Progress provides our customers additional resources for high-quality, original Common Core content.

Dover, New Hampshire (PRWEB) May 06, 2014

As districts across the country continue to transition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), items and assessments built to the Common Core are imperative for educators eager to give their students practice on meeting new goals and expectations. To provide educators with the tools they need to guide their students toward success, Interactive Achievement has teamed up with Measured Progress to offer Measured Progress COMMON CORE™ Assessments as part of its onTRAC® Instructional Improvement System (IIS) platform.

Through this partnership, Interactive Achievement customers can now subscribe to Measured Progress COMMON CORE™ Assessments, which include an Item Bank, targeted Testlets, and quarterly Benchmarks that together guide teachers as they prepare students in grades three through eight and high school for the increased rigor and cognitive demands of the CCSS. Using the onTRAC Assessment Management System (AMS) module from Interactive Achievement, teachers can create and deliver assessments online or via plain-paper scanning. Together, the combined Interactive Achievement and Measured Progress solution will allow teachers to more easily drill down into students’ understanding of specific strands and domains of the CCSS, and then use that information to guide daily instruction. The combination of pre-configured assessments and a standalone item bank gives educators the flexibility they need to give students practice on the areas where they need the most help.

“We’re very excited about our partnership with Measured Progress because it provides our customers additional resources for high-quality, original Common Core content they need to support their transition to the Common Core,” said Jonathan Hagmaier, CEO of Interactive Achievement. “What makes the Measured Progress content so valuable to educators is its alignment to the Common Core—the content was developed specifically to address the rigor and depth of the new standards. Using these items and assessments, in conjunction with our platform, teachers can get the information they need to adjust instruction to better focus on the needs of their students.”

The Measured Progress COMMON CORE Item Bank contains more than 4,900 multiple-choice, short-answer, composite, and constructed-response items. With built-in sample responses and scoring notes, teachers can quickly and consistently score student work. In addition, Measured Progress COMMON CORE Testlets include 100 short, pre-configured reading and math tests that include multiple-choice, short-answer, and constructed-response item types. Each Testlet has a test blueprint, student test form, scoring guides, and optional formative tools to help teachers gain deeper insight into students’ knowledge and skills. Measured Progress COMMON CORE Benchmarks can be administered up to four times a year to students in grades three through eight to give teachers valuable feedback about students’ understanding of the Common Core. They progress in difficulty and are paced to a recommended scope and sequence of the Common Core.

“Because all the items in our COMMON CORE solutions are newly developed and not back-aligned, teachers can gauge students’ understanding of standards that many item banks simply can’t measure,” said Measured Progress President Martin Borg. “We’re delighted to have the opportunity to bring these items to Interactive Achievement customers and support them in their transition to the Common Core. With Interactive Achievement’s proven technology platform and our Item Bank, Testlets, and Benchmarks, educators can gauge student understanding in real time and use formative data to drive effective Common Core instruction in their classrooms.”

About Measured Progress

Measured Progress is a Dover, New Hampshire-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to student learning and improving instruction in the standards-based classroom. Since 1983, Measured Progress has successfully partnered with more than 30 states and hundreds of districts across the nation in support of assessment programs that have affected millions of students. Measured Progress develops state- and district-level assessments and is the nation’s leading provider of alternate assessment for students with cognitive disabilities. Measured Progress also offers assessment services and solutions, including professional development, to assist educators in creating and using assessments that measure student achievement and improve instruction.

A leader in the Common Core movement, Measured Progress was recently awarded contracts by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to create specifications for new and innovative items; design the assessment technology architecture; and develop policies and training materials related to item writing, item review, and testing accommodations and accessibility. Measured Progress is also serving the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) through its development of interoperability standards, which will facilitate the effective and accurate storage and transfer of data across systems. In addition, the company is assisting with PARCC item development. The National Center and State Collaborative chose Measured Progress to develop architecture for a platform to deliver next-generation alternate assessments for students with disabilities. As a not-for-profit organization, Measured Progress is deeply committed to its mission of helping educators improve student learning by connecting assessment, data, and instruction.

It’s all about student learning. Period.

About Interactive Achievement

Interactive Achievement (IA) creates award-winning, standards-based instructional improvement programs for school districts in the U.S. IA was founded in 2006 by educators in response to the need for better assessment and reporting tools that enable both students and teachers to achieve success. As a result, IA’s team is comprised of educators who create products that assist their peers in education in making data-driven decisions in the effort to raise student achievement in all academic areas. For more information, visit http://www.interactiveachievement.com.

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