Progress Monitoring Assessment Window Extended Through Tuesday

I received word on Friday that the final day for PMA 1 has been extended until Tuesday, October 24. For schools that still have students yet to take PMA, this extra two days provides an unexpected opportunity. Remember, PMA is given in K-8th grade. There is no PMA for Algebra 1, Geometry, etc.

For students who have started the first PMA

Here is an important point to understand about PMA. When the PMA period ends, it a student has not yet begun PMA, he or she is out of luck. However, if the student has started PMA, the program allows that student to finish even after the PMA period is over.

What that means is that the critical thing is to have any student who has not started PMA to get at least one question answered by Tuesday. Then, you can finish...hopefully very soon.

Why the whole thing should be a non-issue

Many of you are going to be saying, "PMA 1? Didn't we do that over a month ago?"

Yes, you did...or at least most did. Since PMA is automatically served up to students when they log in, the program takes care of that requirement for you.

PMA takes about 30 minutes for Reading and 30 minutes for Math. The only way for a student not to have completed PMA would be for the student to have used Stride less than an hour cumulatively between September 4 and now.

In many classrooms, PMA started September 4 and students had completed it by September 5. The design of the grant is for Stride to be use extensively.

The next PMA starts November 6.

Best practice

Best practice is to look at the PMA windows and within the school set a fairly narrow window during which your school will administer PMA. For schools which use the program daily, this part takes care of itself.

Since a student must complete PMA before doing any other work in the program, a student who has not completed PMA would not get a teacher-made Quiz Builders, the Stride Adaptive engines, or questions geared to teacher-selected standards. So, doing PMA early allows teachers to give feedback and make decisions about instructions based on overall performance on various standards.

If your students are still doing PMA 1,here is a suggested plan:

• Schedule time to complete PMA 1 What gets scheduled gets done.
• As soon as the last students completes PMA 1, look at the Class PMA Report. Examine the standards you have taught but yet students performed poorly. Decide which ones you may want to reteach between now and November 6. 
• Let students know how they performed on PMA 1. The Class PMA Report gives you this information.
• When you complete PMA 2, look especially at the standards you retaught to see what improvement was made.

Progressing Through PMA

The first Progress Monitoring Assessment ends October 13.

You have the ability to run a report on PMA for both the school and the classroom level.

Running the PMA Report at the School Level:

1. Use the school administrative login to access Stride Academy.
2. Click the "Reports" tab.
3. Click the blue "Generate Real-Time Reports" button.
4. Click "View Reports."
5. From the list of reports which appears, click "School PMA Report."
6. The defaults on the next screen should be OK as is.
7. Click the red "Apply" button.

You will notice that the graph is the first page of almost two-dozen pages of data. You can click through those graphs and tables to see data for each class and data for each grade level.

My recommendation would be to share with any given teacher the data for that teacher's class and the average for the grade level as a whole. That way, each teacher gets an idea where he or stands in relationship to the rest of the pack without ranking teachers. Richard Defoor addresses this point in his PLC seminars.



Running the PMA Report at the Classroom Level:

1. Use your KCC code and password to access Stride Academy.
2. Click the "Reports" tab.
3. Click the blue "Generate Real-Time Reports" button.
4. Click "View Reports."
5. From the list of reports which appears, click "Class PMA Report."
6. The defaults on the next screen should be OK as is.
7. Click the red "Apply" button.

The resulting graph will look much the same as the school graph displayed above. Clicking through the remaining pages will reveal data on each student.

(You will notice the graphs show Math, reading, and Science. You will have only Math and Reading.)

Study Shows Positive Impact of Stride on ACT Aspire Scores

The Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools (CLAS) announced the results of a research study related related to Stride. The study, conducted by Auburn University, measured the impact of Stride on ACT Aspire Results.

Here are the key findings:

1. Stride students overall improved math benchmark pass rates by 15% compared to their demographically matched peers who improved pass rate by 8%. 
2. For reading benchmarks, Stride students improved by 10% whereas their peers showed no statistically significant change. 
3. Economically disadvantaged Stride students improved math pass rate by 23% whereas their peers showed no statistically significant change. 
4. Students using Stride who are both African-American and economically disadvantaged improved at a greater rate than their peers for math pass rate (23% vs. 10%) and reading pass rate (18% vs. 13%). 
5. Students in Special Education who used Stride improved reading benchmark pass rate by 57% compared to an improvement of 33% by their matched peers. 

According to the research findings, “the results suggest that the Stride™ program has been successful during the 2015 and 2016 school years in improving academic achievement in targeted schools."

This finding is in accord with a data analysis of the program done in 2011-12 by the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) which found that students enrolled in the program ‘showed positive results in 8th Grade Math and Reading scores relative to their matched peers’.

PMA Extended to October 20

Because of Hurricane Irma, the PMA window has been extended to October 20. Stride is a nationwide program, and many schools in the impacted areas are Stride users.

Truthfully, the end date of PMA shouldn't be an issue for any of our Calhoun County Schools. Best practice is for each school to set its own narrow window at the beginning of the national window. That way, you get your results quickly, can use the data immediately, and can take advantage of Quiz Builder and the Adaptive Engine.

Your Picture Here

Do you have a Stride story to tell? What's working for you? What are students saying? What are parents saying?

I would like to hear your good news and share it in this space with others. You can send digital pictures and your story to me at this email address: Frank@FrankBuck.org

Progress Monitoring Is Up and Going

If you teach students in the K-8 range, the Progress Monitoring Assessment has begun. When students log in, they automatically begin PMA questions just by clicking on the big coin. Each subject area requires around 30-45 minutes.

Don't worry if a student does not finish in one sitting. When the student logs in next time, PMA questions resume. Another good feature is that when students go home, PMA pauses. Students may use Stride Academy, but they receive the regular Stride Adaptive Engine questions. That way, students are under your supervision during PMA.

You will see who has finished PMA when you log into Stride and look at your Class Roster.

No PMA for Science

PMA consists of tests in reading and math. There will be no science assessment this year.

Stride is in the process of examining the alignment between its Science curriculum and Alabama standards. During this process, there will be no Science PMA.

If you are an administrator, here is what you will see on the "Assessments" tab.

Notice that all of the selections are "grayed-out." You are not able to make any changes from the school level. You cannot turn off PMA. Furthermore, you cannot turn on PMA for Science even if you want to.

While we are talking about subjects...

Now is a good time for every teacher to look at the Curriculum tab to be sure everything is set correctly.

• Which subjects should students work on in your class? Be sure those subjects are checked. Are your students finding they are missing a coin for a subject when they log into Stride?  The culprit will be what is checked on the Curriculum tab.
• Do you have the "F.A.S.T. 360 Adaptive Engine" checked? That's going to be the place you generally want your students to be.
• Do you have a student with some special needs? In the "I want to change the curriculum for" section, bullet "This individual student" and choose the student from the drop-down list. Now, you can check the appropriate subjects for that student. If you only want the student to work on certain standards, bullet "Include only the specific skill areas that I choose." Click "Choose Skills" and start to drill down to the skills you want that student to have. Don't forget to return to this spot and change those skills at the appropriate time.