I.    PURPOSE

The purpose of this policy is to institute a process for the establishment and revision of assessments to measure toward meeting the Minnesota Academic Standards, track academic progress over time, and provide Minnesota graduates information related to career and college readiness.

II.    GENERAL STATEMENT OF POLICY

The school district has established a procedure by which students shall complete Graduation Requirements. This procedure includes the adoption of assessment methods to be used in measuring student performance. The school district strives to continually enhance student achievement of Graduation Requirements.

1. Assessments should be aligned with the standards and provide information for curriculum development and selection of instructional materials.
    
2. Assessments should be differentiated in response to the audience they serve and provide a profile which is meaningful to the student, parent, teacher, counselor, administrator and community.
    
3. Assessments should be multidimensional and yield data, when appropriate, on typical ways of thinking, feeling, acting and metacognition used in learning as well as achievement and performance measures. A variety of assessment tools should be used to evaluate learning including common assessments, performance assessments, assessments using technology and other forms of traditional assessments.
    
4. Longitudinal, aggregated assessments are useful for analyzing and reporting data. Norm referenced data provides information on student achievement relative to other groups in the District, state and nation.
    
5. Assessments provide benchmarks on student learning. Assessments should reflect student growth and be used for diagnosis and direction for future learning.
    
6. Assessments should effectively and efficiently provide data necessary to comply with policies, grants, laws and funding.

III.    DEFINITIONS

1. Academic Standard: A summary description of student learning in a required content area or elective content area.
    
2. Assessments: Multiple tools used to gather information about the student’s performance on the standards taught.
    
3. Benchmark: A clear, specific description of knowledge or skills the student should acquire by a particular point in the student’s schooling.
    
4. Career and College Ready: For purposes of statewide accountability, means a high school graduate has the knowledge, skills, and competencies to successfully pursue a career pathway, including postsecondary credit leading to a degree, diploma, certificate, or industry-recognized credential and employment. Students who are career and college ready are able to successfully complete credit-bearing coursework at a two- or four-year college or university or other credit-bearing postsecondary program without need for remediation.
    
5. Cultural Competence: For purposes of statewide accountability, means the ability and will to interact effectively with people of different cultures, native languages, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
    
6. Curriculum: A written plan including standards, benchmarks, essential questions, an assessment plan, instructional resources and strategies, and time allocations for emphasis and pacing for the content to be taught.
    
7. Differentiation: The process teachers use to plan learning experiences, which intentionally respond to learner needs and strengths. Students would have opportunities to work at their levels of readiness (assessed levels of skills and knowledge), and engage their interests in order to achieve curricular goals.
    
8. Evaluation: The process of making judgments about the level of student’s understanding or performance.
    
9. Experiential Learning: Means learning for students that includes career exploration through a specific class or course or through work-based experiences such as job shadowing, mentoring, entrepreneurship, service learning, volunteering, internships, or other cooperative work experience, youth apprenticeship, or employment.
    
10. Instruction: A teacher-led process, which transforms well-planned curriculum into student learning. Instruction is standards-focused teaching for the purpose of providing meaningful learning experiences that enable all students to master academic content and achieve personal goals.
     
11. Metacognition: A mental process of thinking about how one learns. This is a strategy that can be taught and modeled to students to help them learn rigorous, difficult content.
     
12. Standard: Means (1) a statewide adopted expectation for student learning in the content areas of language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, physical education, and the arts, and (2) a locally adopted expectation for student learning in health. A statewide statement of what the student will know, understand and be able to do.

IV.    AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY

1. The School Board, in its governance capacity, is accountable for the teaching and learning program and delegates responsibility to the Superintendent.
    
2. The Superintendent, or designee, shall establish criteria by which student performance, on academic content standards and other locally developed assessments, is to be evaluated.
    
3. Staff members will be expected to utilize curriculum and staff development opportunities to the extent necessary to ensure effective implementation of the Board-adopted curriculum including state academic standards and District developed assessments.

V.    CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT PROGRAM GOALS

The Minnetonka School District shall conduct a continuous assessment program including achievement, performance, and learning strengths on classroom assessments to serve the following purposes:

1. Assist students in making decisions about courses of study, future education, and/or career planning;
    
2. Assist faculty and administration in making instructional decisions related to:
    
   1. Identification and development of special courses and programs;
   2. Analysis of curricula components and student performance;
   3. Identification of student strengths and weaknesses;
   4. Selection of students for inclusion into programs or classes;
   5. Study District student performance as compared to local and national measures.
       
3. Inform parents and the community about aspects of student performance as related to national and local norms;
    
4. Satisfy the legal requirements for Special Education.
    
   1. Students referred for an evaluation to determine special education needs will be assessed by a multidisciplinary team according to an assessment plan developed as part of the referral process, only after parent/guardian permission is received. The team will conduct a comprehensive assessment in those areas of suspected disability, using instruments and procedures, in the person’s primary language if possible, and in accordance with recognized professional standards. The evaluation will include a review of the student’s performance, based on the specific instructional strategies used in the classroom, performance in other daily routine environments, and information reported by parents, teachers and others regularly involved with the student.
       
   2. Evaluation summaries shall include the reason for referral, instruments and procedures used, results and interpretation of the assessment, a review of the person’s functioning in their current environment, the current level of performance, and the team’s evaluation summary and recommendations.
       
   3. An evaluation must be conducted at least every three years. The IEP team determines what, if any, new data is needed to determine continued eligibility for special education and need for direct, specialized instruction. An evaluation may be conducted sooner if the student or agency requests, and must be conducted if the parent requests.
       
5. Satisfy state and local graduation requirements.

VI.    STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENTS

1. The District will take all necessary steps to ensure that standardized assessments are in accordance with guidelines and procedures established for each test by its publisher and the District.
    
2. Parents and students, eighteen years or older, shall be made aware of the purpose and intended use of assessment results, their right to refuse participation in standardized assessment, any consequences arising from participating or refusing to participate in assessment, and information regarding other persons or agencies authorized to receive assessment results.
    
3. The District has the obligation to see that understandable and usable information about assessment results is communicated to faculty, administration, parents, students and community on a timely basis. Routinely, parents will be given their children’s achievement and aptitude assessment results, with appropriate interpretation by faculty and administration. Assessment results and interpretation will be shared with individual students, upon request.
    
   1. Results of the standardized assessment program will be presented and interpreted to the School Board as an information item. A complete report of results of the testing program will be presented to the School Board on an annual basis.
       
      1. The report shall include multiple year data for the District, delivered by grade level assessments.
          
      2. An interpretation of test results shall accompany this report. Interpretation of assessment results shall include the purposes for which the specific test was designed, what the test purports to measure, the degree of reliability and validity that can be expected, any weaknesses in the instrument or problems associated with its administration as well as any other factors which might affect the usefulness of results.
          
   2. Assessment results will be provided to individual schools in the District.
      
      In the interpretation of results, it shall be recognized that standardized and performance assessments are approximate indicators of student achievement, performance, or learning strengths. They are snapshots in time of a student’s ability or progress, used in conjunction with other measures.
       
4. Assessment results will be maintained and released in accordance with provisions of state and federal law, as well as District policy, as delineated in Policy 515: Protection and Privacy of Pupil Records.
    
5. A routine cycle of review for the District’s Assessment Program shall include appraisal of instruments used, following two years’ use, and a total program and policy review, on a five-year basis.

VII.    STANDARDS FOR MINNESOTA ACADEMIC STANDARDS PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS

1. Benchmarks
   
   Benchmarks will be used by the school district and its staff in developing assessments to measure student academic knowledge and skills.
    
2. Statewide Academic Standards Testing
    
   1. The school district will utilize statewide assessments developed from and aligned with the state’s required academic standards as these tests become available to monitor student progress toward career and college readiness in the context of the state’s academic standards.
       
   2. The school district will administer annually, in accordance with the process determined by the Minnesota Department of Education, the state-constructed tests aligned with state standards to all students in grades 3 through 8 and at the high school level as follows:
       
      1. computer-adaptive reading and mathematics assessments in grades 3 through 8;
          
      2. high school reading in grade 10, mathematics in grade 11, and a high school writing test, when it becomes available; and
          
      3. science assessments in one grade in the grades 3 through 5 span, the grades 6 through 8 span, and a life science assessment in the grades 9 through 12 span (a passing score on high school science assessments is not a condition of receiving a diploma).
          
   3. The school district will develop and administer locally constructed tests in social studies, health and physical education, and the arts to determine if a student has met the required academic standards in these areas.
       
   4. The school district also may use a high school student’s performance on a statewide assessment as a percentage of the student’s final grade in a course, or place a student’s assessment score on the student’s transcript.
       
   5. The school district will record on the high school transcript a student’s progress toward career and college readiness. In addition, the school district may include a notation of high achievement on the high school diplomas of those graduating seniors who, according to established school board criteria, demonstrate exemplary academic achievement during high school.

VIII.    RIGOROUS COURSE OF STUDY WAIVER

1. Upon receiving a student’s application signed by the student’s parent or guardian, the school district must declare that a student meets or exceeds a specific academic standard required for graduation if the school board determines that the student:
    
   1. is participating in a course of study, including an advanced placement or international baccalaureate course or program; a learning opportunity outside the curriculum of the school district; or an approved preparatory program for employment or post-secondary education that is equally or more rigorous than the corresponding state or local academic standard required by the school district;
       
   2. would be precluded from participating in the rigorous course of study, learning opportunity, or preparatory employment or post-secondary education program if the student were required to achieve the academic standard to be waived; and
       
   3. satisfactorily completes the requirements for the rigorous course of study, learning opportunity, or preparatory employment or post-secondary education program.
       
2. The school board also may formally determine other circumstances in which to declare that a student meets or exceeds a specific academic standard that the site requires for graduation under this section.
    
3. A student who satisfactorily completes a post-secondary enrollment options course or program or an advanced placement or international baccalaureate course or program is not required to complete other requirements of the academic standards corresponding to that specific rigorous course of study.