The following email was sent to School Superintendents and District Test Coordinators Friday evening and reports on the approval of new cut scores for Biology I and History EOI examinations…
Dear Superintendent and District Test Coordinator,
Standard settings for the Oklahoma Core Curriculum Tests (OCCT) and the Oklahoma Modified Alternate Assessment Program (OMAAP) Biology I tests were conducted this summer. The State Board of Education has approved the recommended cut scores and performance level descriptors. Likewise, the OCCT and the OMAAP U.S. History tests underwent psychometric standards reviews to establish appropriate cut scores. CTB is currently applying these performance level cuts to students’ raw scores from the Winter/Trimester and Spring administrations and will be posting them online in a file format. CTB will notify districts when these reports are available, and you will be able to access them using your single sign-on through their web portal. In the meantime, we realize districts have been waiting for these scores for graduation or remediation/retesting purposes and hope that the release of the scale score cuts and associated raw scores will be beneficial to schools until the individual student results post.
Also, due to the delay in these scores reporting, the decision has been made to extend the Summer testing window for an another week through Friday, August 9, 2013, so that schools may have additional time to retest students. If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Accountability and Assessments at (405) 521-3341.
Final Biology I Cut Scores
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Key to terms:
Scale Score – all raw scores on OCCT/OMAAP tests are mathematically converted from their raw score to to a scaled score that set proficient at (or sometimes near) 700 and then ranks other levels of performance accordingly
Form A, B – The “live” test items are often produced in more than one form along with the host of “field test” items that are included on the test each year. Sometimes these different forms have different degrees of difficulty and the cut score is adjusted accordingly.
Equivalent form – If an assessment in invalidated due to error in administration or a violation of the testing protocol (student cheating, student becomes ill and can’t finish, the testing platform freezes and won’t allow the student to continue the test… the test can be re-issued in a equivalent form.