Race to the Top Year 4… How Did We Get Here So Quickly?

As the Race to the Top (RttT) southeast region moves forward with their commitments set forth in their RttT Scope of Work (SOW), the focus of Year 4 for many districts and community schools include full implementation of Ohio’s New Learning Standards, Ohio’s next generation assessments, the Ohio Instructional Improvement System and development of Student Growth Measures/Student Learning Objectives.

For example, Tuslaw Local Schools in Stark County has been working this past summer on curriculum mapping and unit planning for the district. Having a deep understanding of Ohio’s New Learning Standards is a goal of the Tuslaw staff. They spent time reviewing their developed curriculum maps, identifying learning targets and assessments, and developing the proper level of rigor for the new standards. Tuslaw will continue to pursue this work and develop their understanding into the upcoming school year.

Buckeye Online School for Success (BOSS) began work this summer and will continue to work on their curriculum mapping and target setting during this school year. Kelli Wohlgamuth, Formative Instructional Practices (FIP) Specialist for the southeast region, will assist BOSS staff with revamping their assessments, the cognitive levels of the assessments and ensuring they match the teaching that will be done within the framework of Ohio’s New Learning Standards.

Helpful to all RttT districts and community schools will be the new training workshops on assessment literacy. Battelle for Kids, working collaboratively with Race to the Top, has developed training on the basics of assessment content, construction and outcomes. Work on depth of knowledge of the assessments is also included in the workshop. They work to build educators’ capacity to:

• Understand and implement balanced assessment systems, including diagnostic tools that may be used to measure student growth
• Acquire knowledge and skills essential for aligning assessment formats and types to strategic, purposeful measures
• Develop a trained eye to determine which measures can generate data for making valid, reliable inferences
• Develop assessment items, performance-based measures, and related scoring guides and rubrics

As a result of this work, educators are empowered to accelerate their instruction with all students.

Workshop sessions will be held throughout the state. Log in to your STARS account to view all available dates and locations. These workshops are designed for the practitioner; however sessions would be beneficial to administrators working with Ohio’s New Learning Standards and Ohio’s next generation assessments.