Alaska Legislature: Joint Task Force on Education Funding, 4/15/26, 3:30pm

Good afternoon, everyone. I call this meeting of the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Funding to order. It is 3:32 PM here on Wednesday, April 15th. We are meeting in the the Betty Davis Committee Room here in the beautiful State Capitol Building located in downtown Juneau, where it is sunny for the one time it typically is throughout the year. This meeting is being streamed live on Alaska Legislature's website and on Gavel Alaska.

That is AKLTV and also ktoo.org/gavel. I do want to remind folks here in the room if they could please mute their cell phones. Documents for today's meetings have been distributed to members. They are available on BASIS. That's akleg.gov.

And There are additional copies outside by the door. Just so folks have this email, if you would like to submit public comments to the task force and task force members, please email us at [email protected].

That is [email protected]. Members present today are co-chair Himchute, Senator Cronk, Senator Tobin. We do expect that we will be joined shortly by Representative Ruffridge, who is listening online, and we also have Representative Story, who is absent today. I want to thank everyone for joining us, including Susan from the Juneau LIO for moderating today's meeting. On today's agenda, we have a presentation from the National Conference of State Legislatures on federal accountability and assessment requirements.

We will also receive a presentation from Professor Tal Thomas from Furman University on how to understand the National Assessment of Education Progress, also known as the NAEP, and referred to as the nation's report card. Finally, the one piece we've all been waiting for, a presentation from the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development on Alaska's statewide assessment, which will include a live demonstration of the AKSTAR assessment. I, for one, am very excited. All right, first up, we are joined by Austin Reed, the federal affairs advisor for the National Conference of State Legislatures. He oversees NCSL's federal education policy work.

He's a former high school teacher. He has his master's degree in education policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education. And in full disclosure, I work with Austin as I serve on the Standing Education Committee for NCSL and on the Higher Education Task Force and also on the Assessment and Accountability Task Force for NCSL. Austin, thank you for joining us. If you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your presentation when you are ready.

Good afternoon, Chair Tobin and Chair Hemmschulte. It's wonderful to be here this afternoon or evening here on the East Coast. My name is Austin Reed. That's A-U-S-T-I-N R-E-E-D. I'm a federal affairs advisor for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

We are the association that represents all of the legislatures in the states and territories. I appreciate the opportunity to present this afternoon. The contents of my presentation will pertain to a broad outline of the federal requirements for assessment, accountability, and school improvement, effectively the policy bedrock of the Title I program as outlined in the Every Student Succeeds Act, or the longstanding bill of the— or the law of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I'm going to start with just a brief overview of what we're going to cover here today. I will briefly outline the federal requirements for assessment.

The federal requirements for accountability, and then finally, the federal requirements for school improvement. I'll detail how these three pillars of the federal law are implemented through state plans and how states describe how they will comply with these aspects of the law. And then we'll end with just a bit of a discussion on some of the flexibilities that federal law offers to states as they carry out their own state goals through assessment and accountability. So to start on the next slide, I want to outline the basic federal requirements for assessments. And so each year, the states, according to federal law, will administer math, English language, and science assessments across a number of grades.

So for math and English tests, those tests will be given in grades 3 through 8. So that's once a year, and then once in high school. For science exams, that's in more of a grade span testing regime. So students will take a science exam at least once in elementary school, once in middle school or 6th through 9th grade, and then once in 10th through 12th grade. So in total, states are going to give about 17 assessments each year.

However, students will only take 3 of those exams in a given school year. States are ultimately given the discretion to choose their assessments. They have to be high quality. There are certain federal parameters and peer review that pertain to determining that. They also have to be aligned to the state's academic standards, which states also choose.

A few other minor things in the assessment world: students with disabilities are able to take alternative assessments. The cap on that is approximately 1% of students per subject are allowed to take those, although we commonly see states request waivers from this particular provision. States are expected to test at least 95% of all students. However, if participation rates fall below that, states ultimately determine the, the consequences for for that lack of compliance. And then finally, states also need to give annual English proficiency assessments beyond those subject matter exams.

A few other things that are on the slide that I would mention is that states are permitted to reduce testing time within certain guidelines. They're also able to offer interim assessments that add up to a summative assessment. So typically, the assessments that I've described are summative in nature. Students will take them at the end of the school year. But states under federal law are able to offer interim assessments that combine into one single summative assessment.

So I wanted to make a note of that. I think that's relevant to a lot of the assessment conversations that some states are having. Moving on, so the purpose of assessment is one, to inform pedagogy, but that's determined at the school level. For the purposes of federal law, it's to determine state accountability systems. So the federal government requires states to enact a system of accountability to meaningfully differentiate performance between schools, and that accountability system is used to then drive school improvement activities that are directed by federal law.

States, in consulting and creating their accountability systems, have to establish long-term goals for all of their students. These are ultimately informed by some of the indicators in the accountability system that we'll see here in a second. But overall, states in their ESSA state plans will describe their goals for their students. They will describe the standards, the academic standards that they use to assess student performance. And what's very critical is that across the performance indicators that are accounted for in an accountability system, states are required to break those out by student subgroups.

And there are four major subgroups that are required. That would be economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, and English learners. And then states within that have to choose a meaningful n-size to make sure that when when they're disaggregating this data, it's not simply identifying one or two students, but it's fairly anonymous. In terms of the accountability system itself, states have a fair amount of discretion to determine the mix of how they put together their accountability indicators, but there are some general parameters that states need to adhere to. So typically, depending on elementary school versus a high school, A state will select between 4 or 5 key indicators for performance.

The bedrock of this is, of course, academic achievement. This is measured by proficiency in those annual exams that I mentioned in the previous slides. For high schools, states can choose to integrate measures of growth within those academic achievement indicators. However, for elementary schools, that is a, a bedrock requirement. So for an elementary school, you will not only measure academic achievement, but also student growth.

Now, separate for high schools is that there needs to be an accounting for that high school graduation rate on a 4-year adjusted cohort rate measure. All schools at any level should also measure progress on achieving English language proficiency. And then finally, this would apply to all schools across the state— states are able to select at least one what is known as a school quality or student success indicator. Some states will select one indicator. There are a number of states that select a menu of different indicators, although all schools have to still account for all of those indicators.

So, some common indicators that we see are measures of chronic absenteeism, suspension rate, science achievement, school climate surveys, measures of college and career readiness. Those commonly can look anything from the rate in which students attain a post-secondary credential Could be their scores on the ASVAB, the military readiness exam. Those are some of the common indicators that you might see in a college and career readiness indicator. Again, as I mentioned, states can choose one or two of those, the key, or more. But with the key here is that those first four academic indicators, the academic achievement, the student growth, particularly for elementary students, the high school graduation rate, and then that progress on English language proficiency, the combination of those measures have to have a greater weight than the weights given to the school quality or student success indicators.

So, that just more or less is understood to mean that 51% of the school's overall rating needs to be related to those academic achievement measures. I think in practice, most states are well beyond that. I think the predominant measures in most state accountability systems are those four academic indicators. And then you'll see those school quality success indicator or indicators factor in depending on the state. Mr. Reid, I just want to take a brief moment here.

We have been joined by Senator Bjorkman, Representative Galvin, and Representative Ruffridge. Additionally, I just want to ask here on number 5, do you see that states typically outline what these indicators are in statute, or are those left up to the regulatory bodies?

Uh, that's a good question. I don't have a specific count on whether states enumerate that in statute or whether that's carried out through regulatory process, or states have the option of either one of those, um, as I'll sort of outline here in a second. Uh, when states created their original ESSA plans, uh, which would have included selecting these indicators, there was a requirement for consultation with state legislatures. So there was an explicit inclusion of legislatures in the creation process behind these plans, including selecting the indicators. Now, that being said, if states have modified their plans beyond that initial state planning process, which took place in 2017, there's not an explicit requirement for legislative involvement.

There is a public comment period that's required, as well as the sign-up of the governor. So it's, you know, in some states the legislature should have been accounted for in that regulatory process. However, there are a number of states that do lay out their specific accountability systems in statute. I also note there are a number of states that have their own state accountability system that is technically separate from the federal accountability system, and sometimes they'll do that for varying purposes, although there is, of course, alignment between those two systems. Oftentimes that— you'll see this in the context of state accreditation of high schools.

That's technically not a federal requirement, but sometimes states will use an accountability system to confer accreditation on high schools. So I don't have a specific count, although if that is something that would be helpful, I can have our team take a look at that and provide. But both pathways are something that we see take place in states. Thank you, Mr. Reed. And you mentioned accreditation of high schools.

Can you unpack that just a little bit? Yeah, that's— it's going to be a state-by-state thing. It's not a federally required process. Some states have a separate process by which they effectively, similar to what you see in higher education, just authorize a high school as an officially recognized high school in that state. I know some states have moved away from that.

I think I taught in a state that had an accreditation system at the time, but it was effectively, as I understood it, and at least in practice, was a way of recognizing that that is a valid high school, and there were, in theory, some consequences for losing accreditation, which could mean the disbanding of that high school in, in specific contexts. So that was probably an era that's, you know, before our current— probably 10 or 15 years ago. But that is, again, not a federal process. For the purposes of federal law, there is a, you know, pretty clearly defined accountability system. But as I mentioned, some states do have parallel accountability systems with a fair amount of intersection between their federal requirements.

Thank you. Please proceed.

So moving on.

So the federal government requires through this accountability system— the accountability system is not simply for just simply consumer information, although that's Certainly one of the purposes, but it's also the driver of required school improvement activities, although states have a fair amount of discretion in carrying out those school improvement activities. So the accountability system helps meaningfully differentiate school performance. There are certain subsets of schools that are identified for what are known as school improvement activities based on 3 different designations. So the most consequential designation a school could receive is as a Comprehensive Support and Improvement School. These are typically the lowest 5% of all Title I schools in terms of their performance.

You can also qualify as a comprehensive support and improvement school if your high school has a graduation rate below 67%. And then there are schools that have been identified in a separate category, which I'll describe here in a second, the additional targeted support and improvement category, that if their school continues to be identified through that designation over time, then they can then convert into a— they would convert into what's considered a Comprehensive Support and Improvement School. So that's the primary designation, the most consequential designation that typically indicates a, again, school-wide performance that is below standard. That's probably why that's referred to as comprehensive. There are other designations, however, for subgroups that are considered underperforming.

So the first would be a Targeted Support and Improvement designation, and this would be again where any— in any school where a subgroup of students is underperforming. The state does get to have some flexibility in how it defines consistently underperforming. And then finally, the additional targeted support and improvement designation is when any subgroup of students at that school on their own would be considered in the lowest performing 5% of all schools. So it's almost like the CSI designation, that Comprehensive Support Improvement designation, but just applied to a specific student subgroup. So you have 3 different categories of improvement designations.

And then on the next slide, states then, once they determine or once they make these designations, they then are required to take action. States do have a lot of flexibility in the actions that they take. There are no federal prescribed School improvement interventions— there were under the No Child Left Behind Act, the law that preceded the Every Student Succeeds Act that we're talking about. But effectively, when schools are identified, they then have to undergo a process of creating an improvement plan. This plan is usually based on some sort of needs assessment.

In particular, then, based on that needs assessment, the schools need to select specific interventions. One of the things that ESSA includes is a requirement that those interventions be evidence-based. There is technically a 4-tier definition of evidence-based in ESSA, and schools are required to select interventions that would map onto those tiers of evidence. And then they also need to figure out any resource inequities that they have in their school. There's also an allowance for students that are identified under comprehensive support improvement to transfer school districts.

Again, there's— you'll see that similarly with the targeted school improvement designation, as well as the additional targeted support and improvement designation. Schools then will— can exit that status based on their performance. Again, that would be after determination of the next year's accountability system. One thing that differentiates this law is that if you are a comprehensive school improvement school that's been identified under that designation for 4 years, After that point, the state then needs to determine some sort of more rigorous action to take in improving that school, but that rigorous action is also left up to the determination of the state. Couple critical things with school improvement: states have to set aside 7% of all of their Title I funding for school improvement activities.

Those funds can be distributed at the state's discretion. They can be awarded through categorical grants. They can also be awarded through a competitive grant process, and they don't necessarily have to be evenly distributed. So there is a pretty wide array of options that states have in order to distribute these resources, as well as to, you know, approve or require any specific interventions at the state level or specific strategies that schools need to carry out if they're identified under these categories. I think broadly, the school improvement activities tend to be bespoke based on the needs of that school, again, sort of in light of that needs assessment.

I'll go to the next slide and talk about the state plan. So effectively, what I've just outlined, the requirements around assessment, accountability, and school improvement— states need to describe their plans for how they're going to carry out those federal requirements and, and describe the areas in which they're given discretion to federal partners. So the states will lay that out on their state plan. They also need to give a number of assurances across another number of other requirements that are included in the other aspects of federal law, which I've listed here, but are probably less relevant to this presentation. So we'll go to the next slide.

I think it's important to talk about the state plan process. I referenced this earlier in one of the questions when we paused for a second. States do need to describe and receive approval for their school improvement assessment and accountability systems from the federal government. The initial planning process for state ESSA plans took place in 2017, shortly after the Every Student Succeeds Act law was passed in late 2015. There is a comment period.

There is a requirement for legislative consultation. As I mentioned, however, states can amend their plans at any time, and they will submit that to the Department of Education. The Secretary has to respond within 90 days. Prior to submitting that plan, the state agency who oversees these plans does need to offer public comment as well as get the sign-off from the governor. But as I mentioned, They don't technically have to consult with the legislature.

However, there is a public comment period that is supposed to take place, and the federal government has to make sure that that comment did take place before they adjudicate any amendment decisions. Mr. Reed, there are a number of—. I apologize, we have a question from Representative Ruffridge. Thank you, Chair Tobin. Um, thank you, Mr. Reed, for being here.

I, I wanted to ask on these 3 sort of federal categories for comprehensive targeted or additional targeted. If a school through their assessment data moves out of these categories, do they lose funding if they are out of the category?

It depends. So if you are identified as a school improvement school, that you could receive additional dollars from the state to carry out school improvement activities. Again, that's that, you know, there's that 7% Title I set-aside. The state decides how it wants to distribute that. But that is— those are considered supplemental resources that are in the service of the school improvement interventions that are selected based on that school's needs.

So in practice, what you often see is that if a school is identified for improvement, they may receive some level of additional funding from the state, which they then use to— sometimes they contract with outside vendors who come in and provide additional support coaches. You'll often see sort of outside consultants working alongside the school leaders to support their academic intervention programs and things like that. They may spend the money on professional development opportunities I think it's probably less likely that you see the school investing in permanent staffing. The idea is that these are supplemental temporary resources for that school to demonstrate improvement that would exit them out of the category. So I hope that gives a little bit of a sense to your question.

Yeah, it does. Thank you. Just a follow-up, if I may. Follow-up. Thank you.

In your work sort of around the country in this specific area, how often do you see schools once they enter these categories, exit them?

It's a good question. I've been a— past life, I did work in sort of the school improvement space, although that was 7, 8, 9 years ago. One of the challenges that I should probably note in the implementation of ESSA is that for the most part, the law was passed in 2015. By the time that states had their state plans approved, and then the law went into full effect. That was, I believe, in school year 2018-2019.

But as you recall, then, there were pretty significant disruptions to schools in the COVID-19 pandemic. And during that time, in school year 2019-2020, the Secretary of Education waived all assessments. And then the next year, the Secretary offered pretty significant flexibility for states in terms of how they carried out their accountability requirements and then their school improvement requirements. And so, What ended up happening is for about 2 or 3 years, the schools that were identified for school improvement in school year 2019-2020 got rolled over for a number of years. And so they kind of just stuck with it.

And then, you know, I think in about school year 2022-2023, that's when, for the most part, states had to resume normal order in terms of executing their ESSA state plans. And so it's been a little bit difficult to get a sense of what this actually looks like, given the disruptions that we've seen in the implementation of this law, particularly due to COVID. So I think that's an important context and makes it a little bit more difficult to say whether or not you see the same schools that end up there, because technically for a few years they were there, but that's because the state wasn't required to create new school improvement designations. Thank you. Thank you.

Please proceed.

All right, so we'll move to the slide on existing flexibilities under ESSA. So like I mentioned, states do have a fair amount of discretion on creating their plans. There are a few other different allowances within federal law for states to receive additional flexibilities. It's worth noting that there is a program that has received pretty relatively limited state participation that does allow for states, based on very specific parameters, to pilot new types of assessments. So that's called the Innovation Assessment Demonstration Authority.

One thing it says it's worth noting is that no more than 7 states can participate in this program at a time. However, this has been effectively enacted for the last 10 years, and we've never had more than 5 states that are participating in this program at a time. And I don't believe that any states have applied for this particular authority within the last 2 to 3 years. So it has been something that states haven't used as much as maybe would have been expected. However, outside of this assessment demonstration authority, as I mentioned, states do have a lot of flexibility in terms of They're allowed to offer computer adaptive assessments.

They can offer interim through-year assessments. Those are things that states don't necessarily have to seek waivers for. That's frankly allowed under federal law as long as they— as long as they satisfy those high-quality assessment requirements that are in federal law. Then finally, if a state wants to do something that is not technically authorized under the law, they can seek a waiver from the Secretary of Education. On the next slide, I'll detail that very briefly.

In terms of what states can and cannot request from the Secretary of Education. The process for requesting a waiver from the provisions in ESSA must be undertaken by the state education agency. That agency has to seek public comment on any requests that it puts in. Those all are posted publicly online, including the Department of Education's website. The Department of Education, once they receive that waiver request, has about 120 days to respond, and we have seen this current administration reminding states of this opportunity and soliciting general waivers from states.

States— the Secretary of Education cannot waive every— there's certain limitations on what the Secretary, I should say, can waive in the federal law. Largely, if it pertains to fiscal requirements, such as the distribution of funds within a state, a number of different local fiscal requirements like comparability, and supplement, not supplant. Those are things the Secretary cannot waive, including civil rights requirements. However, when it pertains to assessment, accountability, and school improvement, we— the understanding is the Secretary does have waiver authority to waive those provisions based on their assessment of whether or not the state's proposal meets the sort of spirit of the federal law. And so you'll see those waiver decisions outlined in letters to states that are posted publicly.

Couple things to note is that the Secretary cannot waive things that are not included in the request, nor can the Secretary require states to meet extraneous conditions from that state's request. That was something that kind of responded to the No Child Left Behind waivers that we saw prior to the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act. So that's— I'm at the end of my presentation, but wanted to just give you a sense of what those general parameters for federal requirements are on assessment, accountability, and school improvement, as well as the potential opportunities that states have to enjoy flexibilities within those broad structures, as well as state ability to receive waivers from those provisions with the approval of the Secretary of Education. Are there questions from committee members? We have Representative Ruffridge.

Yeah, thank you. Chair Tobin, in one of your earlier slides labeled as assessment, I think it was slide 2 or 3, it says in the second bullet, in total, states must administer 17 assessments each year. I'm guessing that that's not to each student. I think that you're meaning the combination of all grades and the subjects. I just wanted to make sure that was —reading that right.

That's correct. The total amount that a state agency will administer across grades would total 17. A student would never take more than 3 in a single year, but most students are going to take at most 2 in a year. There's annual requirements on math and reading which take place between 3rd through 8th grade, but over that span, a student will only take a science exam once between 3rd and 5th grade and then once between 6th and 8th or 9th grade, and then you have to take an assessment, a math, a reading, and a science assessment once during high school. So it's, it's, for most students it's probably 2 exams, but every once, maybe every 3 years, a student may take 3 of those exams in a single year.

Yeah, thank you. And a follow-up, if I may? Uh, we'll come back to you. We're going to have next, we have Representative Himschoop. Thank you.

I have a series of questions, so just cut me off when you need to. My first question through the chair is, I think you might have answered this, but I want to confirm. How often can a state plan change? So, could we change our plan annually? How often can our plan change?

Yeah, there's no real requirements on when states can change their plans. That being said, I mean, there's some level of, you know, the plan would need to be— the timeline for the way that you change the plan would have to line up with the timeline for the next school year. So there are some, some level of deadlines on that, but, you know, in terms of the process, again, a state's gonna have to develop that plan. They do need to have a period of public comment. You also have to take into account time for the Department of Education to weigh in on that particular plan amendment change.

So in theory, there's no limitation to how and how often and when you change your plan, but the process for changing that plan does take some level of of time, so that is a potential barrier, probably not unlike moving legislation through a legislature. There is a timeline that, and certain deadlines that would have to be adhered to for that to go into effect in the proper school year that's forthcoming. Thank you, and we'll do one follow-up. Representative Himschuh, and then we'll move back to Representative Ruffridge. Great.

Have, so we're coming up on a decade, have, are you aware of any states that have revised their plans. Yes. Yes, and I'm happy to submit this through staff, but the Department of Education maintains an actively updated portal that allows anyone to search by state what states have submitted changes to their ESSA plan, as well as any waivers that they've submitted. So there are states that will occasionally change their plans or apply for temporary flexibilities. I know I was just looking at one state in particular that's changed their plan in the last couple of years, but it is something you see regularly.

I'm not as familiar— I'm trying to think if there's been a state that's undergone substantial changes to their plan. I think more often it tends to be sort of small modifications rather than wholesale change to the plan, specifically probably in reference to those original plans that were submitted in the 2017-2018 timeline. But certainly You do see states either applying for some level of small waiver, which technically is separate from a state plan amendment change, but you do see a number of states doing that. And happy to look into that with greater depth. We do have access to that public information if you are looking to get a sense of how other states have moved on state plan amendments in the last few years.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Eden. I believe Alaska has amended our plan twice or maybe 3 times at this point. Representative Ruffridge. [Speaker:MR. HENDERSON] Yeah, thank you.

That was really helpful information. I appreciate Representative Himschutz's questions. I was heading kind of in the direction I was. On the slide labeled State Accountability Systems, under this— I think it's the second bullet, it says states have flexibility to choose specific measurements for some indicators. But then this line, states choose weights of indicators.

How I read that is if we have, you know, 4 of these items that are here above, we could say that our 4-year adjusted cohort graduation rate is, you know, 80% of our accountability metric. Is that how I should read that, or could you explain that a little better? Yeah, the primary federal requirement when it comes to those accountability indicators is that the 4 indicators that are considered academic achievement, so, you know, related to academic achievement, so that would include the academic achievement indicator, the student growth indicator, the graduation rate, and then the progress on English language proficiency, those just simply need to outweigh the school quality or student success indicators. Outside of that, states have pretty broad discretion to determine the weights of each of those indicators in their system. Follow-up?

I think that was pretty clear. Thank you. Representative Himschuh. Thank you. Mr. Reid, can you describe the difference between the previous ESEA and ESSA?

So there is a lot of stuff in the ESSA plan that is locally, meaning state level, determined. And I don't believe that the prior version of the Education— Elementary and Secondary Education Act had that much flexibility in it. Can you briefly describe the difference? Because it was a sea change for us in 2016 when ESSA came in. Yes, so the No Child Left Behind Act was the authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that preceded the current version that we're under, which was known as the Every Student Succeeds Act during its period of authorization in 2015.

So No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001-2002. And during that, the similarities was that there were same level of assessment requirements, but the federal government was much more prescriptive in terms of how states needed to act on those assessment results. And so one of the key drivers of the No Child Left Behind law was this idea that all schools needed to reach 100% proficiency on those academic assessments by, I believe it was 2013-2014. And of course, schools were not on track to make that progress. But there were some pretty significant consequences for schools that were falling short of those particular goals.

And so that included pretty, pretty stringent requirements for state intervention in schools that were underperforming. In fact, I believe under the previous regime, the federal government had specific mandated strategies for school improvement. It would often give, you know, schools a sort of a menu, but the menu was selected by the federal government. So under that regime, schools that, as I recall, schools that were underperforming could face consequences as severe as, you know, firing of staff, the firing of leadership. The dissolution of the school altogether through closure.

And so that's often how you would see sort of the accountability play into those school improvement interventions. And so, in the case of ESSA, you have quite a bit of relaxation around how school or states need to go about intervening in schools that are identified for improvement. And then in terms of the sort of accountability states have a lot more discretion in determining what measures they want to use, how much weight they want to put in those measures, and that was something that was not, you know, characteristic of the previous law, the No Child Left Behind bill. So I guess the difference, the primary difference, is that the previous authorization was very prescriptive from the federal level. Effectively, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which we've been under for the last 10 years, has the same structure, same kind of goals to but effectively affords states a lot more discretion into how they carry out their systems of assessment, accountability, and then school improvement intervention.

And Representative Himschoot, we'll give you the last question here as we need to move on to the next presentation. Sounds good. I have no idea where I got this, but I've heard that some states test every other year. Do we have the latitude to not test annually, and how much federal funding is on the line if we said we're just not going to do it? It's a good question.

To my knowledge, there is no state that has received a waiver from the Secretary of Education to not test on an annual basis where it's required. So annual testing is required for grades 3 through 8 for math and reading. I'm not aware of any state that has ever received, in at least this era of the Every Student Succeeds Act, a waiver from testing students in those subjects on an annual basis. That is technically, I believe, something that could be waived by the Secretary, but again, I don't think we've seen anything to that effect. You know, I think you're kind of referring maybe to grade span testing.

Certainly the federal requirements for science assessment meet this sort of a concept of grade span testing in which you need to test once over a span of grades. So Science assessment would fall under that, but I'm not aware of any states that have received any waivers from giving those annual assessments outside of, of course, the Secretary unilaterally. Actually, the Secretary technically invited states for waivers from assessment requirements in 2020, but the Secretary did not provide those waivers in the 2020-2021 school year. States were able to to receive flexibilities for how they administer tests during a time of widespread school closures, but even then, technically, the Secretary did not waive assessments outside of very unique circumstances. Well, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Reed, and I will encourage folks to reach out to Mr. Reed if they have any additional questions. I have found him to be incredibly insightful and informative, and if you want somebody who knows anything about federal impact aid, I think our resource is Austin. He knows more about our state's federal impact aid than I think some folks in our federal government at this moment in time. Thank you again for joining us. We're now going to move on to a presentation from education professor Paul Thomas from Furman University.

Mr. Thomas is a former high school English teacher, and his presentation is titled "Understanding NAEP and Education Funding." Mr. Thomas, Paul Thomas, welcome to the Education Funding Task Force. If you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your presentation when you are ready.

Thank you very much for having me here. I'm Paul Thomas, P-A-U-L-T-H-O-M-A-S. I've been an educator for 42 years, 18 years as a public school teacher, and now I've been at the university level for an ongoing 24 years. Yeah, I'd like to go over basically NAEP testing on the second slide. The basic groundwork here is that NAEP is administered by the National Center for Educational Statistics out of the Department of Education.

It came out of the 1990s as an accountability measure. Since some of what we— what you've heard before, states have had a lot of flexibility for state-level testing uh, over the '90s into the 2000s, and NAEP is designed to give something to, uh, compare state proficiency, uh, across the board, and I'll, I'll get to that in a minute. Uh, it is a random sampling of students. It's primarily grades 4 and 8 in content areas. You can reasonably count on math and reading being tested every 2 years.

Other content areas are also tested, but not as regularly. There's also a 12th grade test, test, and there's also the Long-Term Trends, LTT, NAEP test that not many people pay attention to, but primarily the focus is on the grade 4 and grade 8 math and reading. There are major changes coming to NAEP that'll be administered in 2026. A person who does some really good work on NAEP is Tom Loveless. He used to be with Brookings Institute.

And he has put out a warning, and one thing that I would caution is anytime a test is revised, it is very common for scores to go down. And on slide 3, I'm gonna talk for a second about the media. When test scores do fluctuate, that is a problem because generally, I'm going to say that we have to be very skeptical of how media covers test data. If you would Google "two-thirds of students can't read" or "two-thirds of students aren't proficient readers," you'll get hundreds and hundreds of hits. These are just two examples of high-profile journalists, and what I'll explain in a minute, they're very much misrepresenting the data that we have on students because there's no standard definition in the United States for grade-level reading.

There's no standard definition in the United States for the term proficient. On the third slide, in NAEP, proficient is a very high standard. A report that was done by Rosenberg in 2004 identified that NAEP proficient is at the 70th percentile. So if you hear that 30% of students, only 30% of students are proficient, That is statistically legitimate. That is, that is what the test is designed to do.

One word that was used in that designing of those achievement levels was that proficient was aspirational. In other words, it's something that we were trying to work toward, not necessarily something that we should expect all students to do. The level of NAEP that is probably more important is is basic. So if we go to the third slide, I know this is small, I apologize for that, but NAEP does provide every year a correlation, or every time the test is given, it's delayed, the newest one we have is 2022, a correlation between state proficiency and NAEP proficiency. If you'll look there, the gray bar across virtually every state in the United States uses state proficiency that equals NAEP Basic.

And you'll see that Alaska is there with most other states toward the low end, but it still is in the Basic area of NAEP. This is— to me, this is a serious problem because it causes a great deal of confusion. Also, I really would like to stress this is just kind of an arbitrary assumption that it's grade level. Just because states are saying that students should be able to pass these tests at a certain grade, again, there's no standard saying that that is legitimate grade level. On the fourth slide, I would like to point out Gerald Bracey, who is a scholar on standardized testing and assessment.

Has some principles that I think are very important, especially for policy. One is that rising test scores do not necessarily mean rising achievement. I would add to that that dropping test scores do not necessarily mean a drop in learning. Very important, though, is do not use a test for something other than what it's designed for doing, and a lot of times we're making decisions about policy based on things like NAEP and media coverage of NAEP, and it's likely not an appropriate use.

On the next slide, focusing specifically, I would recommend the key to understanding test data in Alaska is the information on, you know, poverty. About half the students are identified as in poverty, and also, like almost every state, I really want to stress this, since the late 1990s, states have the same poverty gap. Even, I know there's a lot of attention given to states like Mississippi, which is also a very high-poverty state, they have not closed their poverty gap. It is the exact same that it was in 1998. So that I think we often think about achievement when we're talking about education policy, but really education policy and socioeconomic policy are really strongly connected.

And that's what I'm gonna move to on the next slide. There's a study by Morin and Tinken from 2024. I will stress again, this is not something new. We've got decades of research that says the same thing. They found that 63% of test performance is correlated or causally related, actually, to the home and the community of the student and not to the school.

If you remember the value-added movement under the Obama administration, That showed that teacher quality only impacted test scores between 1 and 14%. That is a very stressful thing to think about because we know that teachers are incredibly important. Statistically, though, teacher quality has very little impact on test scores, whereas the socioeconomic status of their family has a huge impact. And I think the highlighted sentence here, I think, is extremely important. Family income variables are immutable by schools.

Only public policy outside the control of school personnel can influence family income. And I would also like to stress their conclusion is that policymakers need to rethink their reliance on test data when they're making policy decisions. I know this is a difficult— I'm not saying, obviously, that we shouldn't have education-specific policy. Policy. What I'm saying is that we often don't focus on that social— socioeconomic policy and education policy are strongly connected.

Often things like test scores, especially reading test scores, are not just a reflection of reading proficiency, they're a reflection of socioeconomic status of the students. On my final slide, I have a good a good number of resources. There's some excellent data and resources on NAEP. And I'm happy to flesh out any of that if you're interested. Well, thank you, Professor Thomas.

I do want to note for the record that we were joined by Representative Eichide at 4:15 PM. Are there questions from committee members? Representative Galdon. Thank you. Thanks so much for your work through the chair.

My question for you, Mr. Thomas, is that my understanding is that we created these different tiers called Title I funds, um, I think in order to help, um, give a little bit of an equalizer, if you will, or perhaps grow some equity in those schools wherein we know there is deep poverty. What is your assessment as to whether that is working or not? I think two things can be true at once. Many education policies and fundings may work and they may not show up in the data. That's why I think we should be very skeptical of focusing on just raising test scores.

Also, this is a really hard thing for me to say because I've been an educator for over 40 years. It's my career. In general, society has a stronger impact on schools than schools have on society. So the ability for in-school-only policy to kind of move the needle really just doesn't happen. It's kind of something that we ideologically believe in the United States, but data doesn't doesn't support it.

I do think there's some wonderful things about Title I funding— restrictions on class size, support for teachers, support for students. I do think all of those are incredibly important. Regretfully, I think a lot of times it doesn't show up that well in the data. Thank you. A follow-up, if I may.

Follow-up, Representative Galvin. Thank you. I think another portion of the Title I funding is around higher engagement among families, kind of the sense that maybe if we work to grow better connectivity with families and more of a perhaps a culture of education, if you will, among some. And I just wondered if you had any comments. I've heard of some districts where there's a deep focus in that area with those Title I funds and sometimes seeing more growth there.

Than in others, and I just don't have any data though to back that up and wondered if you had any comments.

Yeah, I think, again, I think the greatest impact that we could see in schools if families did have greater support— one thing that I point out all the time, and I think this is really strongly connected with my NAEP discussion, the highest-performing schools on NAEP in the United States are the Department of Defense schools. They way outperform Massachusetts. They're at the 70th percentile and the 90th— excuse me, the 70% and 90% of the students are above basic, and what do they have? No poverty. The students have food.

The students have medical care. The parents have jobs. They have stability. This is one of the most frustrating things about the NAEP discussion for me is that we have really good evidence and we just don't focus on it. The national attention is on Mississippi when it should be on the Department of Defense schools.

Thank you, Mr. Thomas. We have a question from Representative Himshoot. Actually, I'm hoping for a couple of questions. We'll just see through the chair. I just want to pick up where you left off right there.

Dodiea did not always perform high. There was a period of time where they were low-performing schools, and that's been a turnaround. So I agree with you on your statement, or your— you posit it has to do with poverty, but it also has to do with focus according to the things that I've been reading. So can you speak to any kind of turnaround in Dodiea, or am I— I could be completely off. —So if you could just go a little deeper on the Department of Defense outcomes.

Yeah, you're exactly right. Regretfully, there's one—I've been able to find one national coverage of their success. And I will say, interesting to me, one thing they did is they pay their teachers. There were teachers interviewed in this. And they got a $10,000 raise moving from public—normal public school—traditional public schools into the DoDEA.

So I think class size, teacher support, and structure. I do know that they've had significant oversight and much more structure and much more cohesion from school to school concurrent with the higher test scores. So, and I think I'm really glad you asked this because I think the solution is we need both. If we have social support and we do the in-school reform, I think we see results. Regretfully for me, we keep just doing the same kind of accountability, new standards, new test approach in schools and don't do anything else around it.

So, yes, there have been changes in the DoDEA schools. Teacher support, teacher pay, class size and structure have been really significant. Follow-up, Representative Himschu. Thank you. You mentioned Raj Chetty, I think, before when you talk about the value-added, and you didn't name that study, but my understanding is a quality teacher can make the difference of a year's growth.

Over time or something like that. There's some crazy amount of growth, and what you said doesn't align with that. You said it's really a small percentage. So can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, I was not referring to Chetty because his— his— that work has been discredited.

There's a— there's a study from ASA. I can send it to y'all if you'd like to see it. It was done in 2014, and they found that the the impact of teachers was between 1% and 14%. This sort of speaks to what I said earlier. The Chetty study came out and the media ran with it before there was much peer review of it.

And I was not referring to that report, but I can send you the report about teacher impact during the VAM era. I think it's American— I think it's the American Statistical Society. I can't remember, but I do have the study and I could send it. Thank you, Professor Thomas. If you can send that to our Education Committee aide, Mr. Mason, we can get that distributed to members.

And we'll have the last question by Representative Himschu. Thank you. I'm not sure— I might be going further afield than you're prepared to go today, but when we take— so this is not specific to Alaska— when we take American students, how do they compare on national tests like— or international tests like the TIMSS or of the PISA. Are you able to speak to that or am I going outside your field? Well, I've done a little bit on that and I would say, again, I would recommend Gerald Bracey that I mentioned earlier.

He's done a ton of work on this. Ironically, and again, I would recommend Tom Loveless on this too. Ironically, at the same time that we were having some sort of national crisis talk, probably about 8 or 10 years ago, Florida was having— getting criticized for their NAEP scores at the same time that they were outperforming other nations in these international tests. And currently, the United States has a higher PISA reading score than they do in England. And England has been doing Very similar reading reform.

They've had required phonics checks since 2006. They've been doing systematic phonics for every student since 2006. Our PISA score is higher in the United States. Generally, if you adjust for poverty or take poverty into account, the United States actually does pretty decently in international comparisons. Where we get in trouble is that we don't look that good compared to other countries that have much lower childhood poverty.

I would say it's— this is an interesting phenomenon. We used to be compared to Finland. Finland had very high international scores. At that time, they had 3% childhood poverty. And their poverty rate has skyrocketed in Finland, and you'll notice that their international test scores have dropped dramatically.

Uh, I just did a piece on that on my Substack, uh, if you're interested in that. Well, thank you, Mr. Thomas. I really appreciate you joining us here today. Uh, if committee members are interested, uh, I am sure that he would, uh, be willing to, to spend a half hour with you to unpack more of his research and data. I really, uh, value your input and insight, uh, as we have joined many states in having many discussions about, uh, where we rate on NAEP.

And whether that's the right tool to be using when we think about school performance. Thank you. With that being said, we are now on to our final item on our agenda, and I cannot be more excited. We are joined by the Deputy Director of the Division of Innovation and Education Excellence, Kelly Manning, and also the Administrator for Standards and Assessment, Karen Moline. Welcome to the Education Task Force.

We have many lawmakers here who are ready to take the AKSTAR. Scary. Good afternoon. Thank you for having us. I'm Kelly Manning, Deputy Director for Innovation and Education Excellence.

And my name is Karen Moline, Administrator for Standards and Assessments.

You're aware of our mission, vision, and purpose. I will highlight in the Purpose, where we talk about our— that we exist to provide information, resources, and leadership. The assessment team is very much a support for districts in administering the statewide assessment, ensuring understanding, supporting district testing coordinators in the process. And so very much the purpose of the department is implemented in our assessment area.

On our strategic priorities, I know you're very familiar with these as well, so I will just highlight The assessment is very much the metric by which we measure, in particular, our ability to close the achievement gap, and also is one of the metrics for our Reading by Third Grade. We do, for today, have— before we dive into the slides, we do have a walkthrough of our practice test. We have some information just around what the assessment is, and then following the practice test. We have some information on the reporting that is available for test takers, students, parents, and, and also classroom teachers. Well, I believe the committee will volunteer Representative Ruffridge to be our test taker.

No, because I showed up late. We're gonna do 3rd grade, so I think it'll be okay. Again, for the record, Karen Moline, Administrator for Standards and Assessment. And I will say, um, Coach Yortoban, you are the most excited individual I've met to take the test. I've had the privilege of observing students, and none of them are near as excited to take the test as you are, so I appreciate that.

So before we begin today, I want to have just a little bit of shared vocabulary as we move forward. You may hear some of this in assessment conversations. The first is interim assessment. An interim assessment is given periodically throughout a school year to monitor a student's progress towards standards. So MAP Growth, if you've heard of that assessment, a MAP Growth is an interim assessment.

There's a phrase you may hear, normed referenced assessments. This type of an assessment looks at a student's performance as it relates to other students that are taking the test. So MAP Growth is a norm-referenced assessment. Another term you may hear as we talk is a summative assessment, and a summative assessment is given at the end of an instructional period, and the purpose of that is to measure a student's mastery towards content in a particular set of standards. So AKSTAR, Alaska's System of Academic Readiness, is a summative assessment.

And the last piece of vocabulary that we'll cover before we get started is criterion-referenced assessment. And a criterion-referenced assessment measures a student's knowledge and skills or performance against a fixed set of standards. So AKSTAR is a criterion-referenced assessment. Thank you. And we have a question from Representative Reffrige.

Thank you, Chair Tobin. In regards to the norm-referenced assessment, in relation to a student's peer, is that in Alaska only, in that particular school district, in that school? How do you select the student's peer? Yes, thank you for the question. Again, to the co-chair, to Representative Ruffridge, it's to any student across the country.

That takes the test. So they're, they're compared to their peers across the country of anyone that takes that particular test. So for instance, MAP Growth. Thank you. Representative Himschuh.

Thank you. I want to confirm, so when I was a kid, it was the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, or could we also say that the SAT and the ACT are norm referenced? Where would you put those on here? SAT and Excuse me, through the chair, Representative Hemmschulte. ACT and SAT would be a norm-referenced test because you get a— you get a score compared to your peers, right?

And that's how you fall. Okay. In your scoring. Okay. Okay.

So Alaska has done some innovation in assessments, as you heard in some of the previous presentations, that there's a bit of flexibility allowed. And so what we have in our AK-STAR is a connected approach. So we have MAP Growth, which is the interim assessment, and then we have AK-STAR, which is the summative. The summative. So we've taken the power of an interim assessment and the need for a summative assessment, as was dictated through, through ESSA, and connected those to come up with what we have as a KSTAR.

And in your packets, you'll have a deeper explanation of how that connection is and, and what it means for a student when they take a KSTAR.

Questions?

Alright, so we're going to get ready to make Coach Ortoma's day and take the assessment. So in preparation, you do have an answer key in your packet. So if you're the kind that wants to have the answer keys right by you. That is available in the Educator's Guide to Student Readiness in Appendix C, so if you want to go there, you'll be all prepared. And before we begin, I just want to make sure we understand what the test is and what it isn't.

So the practice test is, is meant to be a sample of what a student would see in the experience of AKSTAR. We can't actually take an AKSTAR test test because we would have to have a secure browser and, uh, make the testing environment to where there would be protection of the items and such. So what we're going to do today is show you a sample of what a student might see. Um, and the power in this practice test is that students get to see the different kind of item types. So they may see, uh, one that may require them to drag and drop or have a multiple select.

So they will get this experience so the test itself isn't a barrier. They'll know how to navigate the test technology, technology, and they can focus then on the content. So, and, and I'll also say that this practice test is available to anyone that wants to take it. You can invite your friends over for a party and everybody take the practice test, however, however you want to, to do it. And you can take each, every grade, any grade, any subject.

There's the option for an accommodation or no accommodation, and we will give you a demonstration of each today. Thank you. I just want to note for the record, we have been joined by another test taker, Senator Keel. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to say that for the record, I am now not the test taker since he is now the latest.

Welcome. It doesn't feel welcome. All right. Yes, so when you arrive on the landing page, you'll get a choice to take AKSTAR summative or the practice test, and you'll choose the practice to take the practice test. I was eager to.

And, and then you'll just move through. You'll select the year, which the only option that you'll have is—. Sorry, I was jumping around. I apologize. The only option you'll have is that select the year for 2026, and then you can choose the grade, and we're going to select grade 3 today, and you can choose your subject.

Subject matter, and we're going to start with English language arts. Then your final selection is whether you want to do it with accommodations or without accommodations, and for the English language arts assessment, we'll do without accommodations, so no accommodations.

And then you will go through a series of, uh, of scripts that were we in an actual classroom and a test administrator giving a test would read this script for the students and encourage them to go next.

Just make it a full screen. Oh, okay. Thank you. So we'd read the script and then say next, and then the test administrator would walk through with the students the tools that are available to them. And this is, this is one of the main reasons for students to take this practice test is so they know what tools are available for them as they, as they take the test.

So we'll go through the series of available tools. Miss Malene, quickly, just in regards to the previous questions around accommodations If a student has low vision or has an ability to see some text on the screen, like I see there is a little blue box and some students have an inability to see the color blue, what are the additional accommodations for those students? Yes, thank you for the question, Co-chair Tobin. There are a number of accommodations that are available and those are identified through the IEP process. Process.

So if a student has a certain accommodation in their regular everyday instructional practice and they have difficulty seeing colors or sizes, those particular accommodations are identified through their IEP process and then they are provided in, in the assessment. But this, the universal one that's available is a text-to-speech. Thank you.

Can I ask a quick question? Representative Himschoot. Director Mullin, so the text-to-speech, is that for all grade levels or for K-3? Can a 5th grader get text-to-speech on a reading passage? Uh, through the chair to co-chair Himschoot, K-3 students don't take AKSTAR, of course, but, uh, but a 5th grader, if identified as a needed accommodation, would have a text-to-speech.

However, it would not read necessarily the passage, but read the question and the answers. So, and you can see how that operates on the practice test here and choose the text-to-speech option and then it'll read the directions to you. So it would have read the directions out loud to this student that would be taking the test. Okay, thank you. For the record, Kelly Manning, I'll just add, in the training supports that we provide from the assessment and our special education team, we do provide support for special education teams and directors on what are the accommodations of the assessment, making sure that they know what those are and, and what can be built into a student's individual education plan.

And then part of the assessment practice is helping them to get familiar with those tools so that they know how to use it when they go through the assessment. Assessment itself. A very brief follow-up. We, we unfortunately do have to stop at 5 o'clock exactly, as there is ledge council this afternoon as well. Does the AKSTAR begin at 3rd grade?

Yes. Okay, so a 3rd grader would take the test but not a K-1 or 2? Correct. Okay, thank you.

So this again is, is instructions to the student. If they walk away, they need to, to push the pause button, they can come back and restart their test. And this happens like for breaks and, you know, whatever kind of stretch breaks the administrator— test administrator might deem necessary. All right, we are ready to begin, so I'll give you a moment to read the passage.

And you let me know when to scroll down.

Okay, maybe scroll.

All right, and then you have to the right of the screen, you have the question, um, and then your selection of answers, and you'll select one.

I'll let you select, or I'll select for us, whatever the pleasure of the co-chairs are.

We have a third as being our first and final answer. How they raise their young? That's correct. So if you look on your answer key, you'll see that that is the correct answer. Also on your answer key, you will see the academic standard that is attached to this particular item.

And so as you're taking— if you choose to go back through and take the assessment and look at the answer key, you'll see standards from possibly grade 2 or grade 4 or— because the practice test is done in grade bands. And so you'll see a variety of different standards. So we'll go to the next one. And, and my goal is to introduce you to different item types that a student might encounter. So we'll give you a second to read the passage.

You selected your— Have you selected the sentence you would like to place in sequence?

I believe it's 3 again. So you're choosing put the lima beans on the soil? So for this particular item, the student would click on that sentence and then it would fill in the line. So that's another item type that a student would encounter. So the next item The student would read the paragraph and select the main idea of the paragraph.

Rough Ridge. I'm gonna go with number 4. Oh, I really wanted number 1. Number 4 is, "Oceans are important to life on Earth," and that's correct.

And then the final one we'll do as, as a sample for what the test might look like is a different kind of item as well.

And with this particular item type, you can see that the student is being asked to choose 2 answers instead of 1. So this student would need to select 2.

1 And 4.

So Dad likes new things and are we—. I think it's 3. 3. Oh, so Milan is enjoying the market, just not the band. Mm-hmm.

Okay, 3. So 3. So yes, this is where they differ. That is correct for this particular item. We saved you, Rebecca.

Thank you. I like group tests. So we can— you want to do one more? You want to join my trivia team? Okay, maybe go to the map.

Yeah, so, so that was So this is just an example of what kind of item types and what kind of content. And again, in your— in the Appendix C of the Educator's Guide to Student Readiness, it would also identify the standards that are being assessed. So if a classroom teacher wanted to give their class the practice test, go over the answer key, look at the standards, evaluate how they felt like they did. So now we'll go to the math practice test. Again, go through the same process, select the year, the grade, the subject, and this time we'll choose an accommodation of text-to-speech to give you an idea of what a student is going to see if that is their accommodation.

So if a student does receive a text-to-speech accommodation, they would be— also need a headset to be with their their peers in the classroom. So for the test— sorry, Matt. Oh, Representative Hemmschuetz, I just want to give us a time check that we are at 10 minutes, so just so you can keep that in mind. This is online. Districts have to have one-to-one devices and potentially headsets for every kid.

Through the chair— through the co-chair to Representative Hemmschuetz, for every student that was taking the test at the time So two students could use, like, test in the morning, test in the afternoon, and use the same device, but they would have to have a headset to be used to have the text-to-speech accommodation if they're testing with other students in the room. Right.

So, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy white dog. So, so So this particular assessment, that would have been the sound check. So the students would say, "Please click on the speaker to make sure you're hearing it." So that's the sound check.

And then again, they would go through this and they would have the same opportunity, and there's a little speaker at the top of the the toolbar there that when they want to hear the speaker speaking, they would click on that. And I will just give this disclaimer. This is a computer-generated voice, so it's an Amazon Polly voice. So just to prepare you.

So the student could, could click on the speaker up at the corner This one. Yeah. And then play. Diana had 63 feet of rope. She cut the rope into 7 pieces of equal length.

Which expression represents the length, in feet, of each piece of rope? Select one answer. 63 Times 7, 63 minus 7, 63 plus 7, 63 divided by 7. So we make our selection. Looks like 63 divided by 7 is our choice.

So we remove that and move on to the next one.

So if we listened again. Use the information to answer the question. Marshall buys a pencil for 12 cents and a sticker for 5 cents. He has no money left over. How much did Marshall pay in all?

Move a number and a symbol to the lines to show the answer. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 Dollars, cents. So it, it looked like we were gonna go with 17, so the student would click on 17 and it moves to this spot, and then they would choose a dollar or cents and that would move to the spot, and the student would not be able to advance unless they had chosen the 2 spots. So we'll do one more. Before we move off that, thank you, Madam Chair.

So if a student is using an accommodation for, yeah, the not being able to read the sentences and know, how are they gonna do the clicking and the moving of the thing to the spot? It doesn't make any sound when you do that? Through the chair to Representative Rafferty, are you referring to identifying the answer? Yeah, so I guess why would someone use text-to-speech? I would assume it would be because they aren't able to see it, or it was difficult to see.

Wouldn't it be difficult to select the answer? Through the, through the co-chair to Representative Rafferty, yes. Yes. Okay. So the ideal situation would be that a student had been instructed using a text-to-speech accommodation or had experience in that platform in the past so it wouldn't be a totally foreign approach, and as you saw, the answers were read to the student, so like once the correct answer was read, they could have identified that.

—As a correct. And they can go back and have it read again to them. And they have— sorry, follow-up, Madam Chair. Follow-up, Representative Erskine. They have somebody helping them, I would assume, if that was part of their learning plan, to maybe move the mouse and select.

If they— let's say I was taking the test, it was being read to me, and Senator Tobin was helping me take the test, I would tell her, select 17. If that— through the chair to Representative Rojic, if that was their accommodations, if that's what their IEP indicated they needed, then that's what would happen for them. Yeah, thanks. Okay, we'll do one more.

And this again is a different item type. The following table shows 3 shapes. Determine whether each shape is a quadrilateral. Select one box per row. Shape is a quadrilateral.

Is not a quadrilateral.

So for the sake of time, the first shape is not a quadrilateral and the other two are.

All right, so— Go back to our presentation? Yes, we can go back to the presentation, and, and again, if you have, if you would like to go further in the test and explore different grades and see what it looks like at a different grade level. You do have the answer key that indicates the standard being assessed and the correct answer. I'm going to need that. Perfect, thank you.

And those, those answers are found in the Educator Guide to Student Readiness, which is in your packet. So very quickly, we'll go over what kind of reports you're going— would be given to a student family and teacher and after taking AKSTAR. This is a student profile and I want to draw your attention to the projected proficiency score that a student would see on their MAP Growth. So this particular student profile, you can see the student's growth and get their AKSTAR proficiency score as approaching proficient. So even though they're showing growth, they may still not reach proficient.

For the fa— for the parent report, the family report would get a similar sort of information, again with that projected proficiency report down in the lower right-hand corner and So the family would know where the student was falling, even though they may be showing growth, they may be still need support on AKSTAR. Again, the difference between a criterion-referenced assessment and a norm-referenced assessment. And for the record, Kelly Manning, this report and the student report, they're able to get that within 24 to 72 hours after the testing window. And that's important to note because a lot of folks have asked about, you know, the timeline for when you receive results. So the statewide results will be released in the fall.

Districts get the student results in July, but they do have this information available for the schools, the parents, and the students on how they performed and how they are— where they're likely to fall within the AKSTAR. So it is a piece of information that that they can take forward at the— within the window of the testing. So within 24 to 72 hours after taking the test. And for the record, Karen Mullin, Administrator for Standards and Assessment. These reports are available after each administration in the fall and the winter.

So in the fall, a family and a student and an educator will get a projected proficiency. So we can go to the next report that the educator would get, and they have a projected proficiency report for their class and for each individual student. So giving information not just where students are but where they could be heading and, and possibly, hopefully students that need someone to intervene on their behalf to get to where they need to go, the educator does have that information as well.

So I also wanted to share real quickly what resources are available to educators and families for— to know what the test is going to look like. That first link will take you to the assessment blueprint. That tells you which standards are going to be assessed specifically and how many items for each standard group there will be. Again, to help educators know what's going to be on the test. The second link there are the achievement level descriptors.

That will tell, tell you what a student would be able to do at each proficiency level. So if you have a student that's performing at one level, you could say this is how, this is what they can do, and to move to the next level they would need to be able to do something else. And then the Educator's Guide to Student Readiness, that's a packet of all kinds of resources, the answer key, the standards, and the item types. Uh, we have a, a few things, um, coming soon attractions. One is to have the answers embedded into the practice test so you don't have to have a separate answer key.

And then we do have a report coming out in a few weeks, Strengthening Skills, which is the most missed item types and the most missed standards.

And then these last few slides are just a way for you to get to that practice test if you do want to take other grade levels or dive a little deeper, these will— these slides can direct you to how to do that. For the record, Kelly Manning, the link that's embedded on the slide when we went to the practice test also will take you straight to that page where we started.

Thank you so very much for this overview of the AKSTAR and MAP growth assessments I, for one, have, unlike Professor Thomas, haven't spent an entire 40-year career, but have spent some of my academic experience learning how valuable evidence-based teaching practices are, and particularly for the MAP Growth Assessment. I know many of our educators really appreciate this tool and the ability to see where their students are and then adapt their teaching methodology and pedagogy to hopefully move their students toward proficient. And so I'm very excited at this particular assessment that we offer to our educators, and I'm very thankful that you were here to help us understand and unpack it a little bit more. We are at time, and so I am going to ask folks who are here, if you have the ability to ask these fine folks questions once we go off record, myself and another member of the task force are needed to be at another committee meeting here in about 15 minutes. So I want to thank everyone once again for joining us here for this meeting of the Education Task Force.

I am very thankful for folks for joining us. As there is no other business before us today, I will adjourn us at 5:02 PM. I have so many questions.