Since the transition from ACT to SAT, schools in Michigan have been capitalizing on the opportunity to access the Question Analysis Report in the College Board Reporting Portal to examine actual test items, student selections for each item, and explanations for correct selections and likely errors. Educators have used the report to determine areas of strength and weakness, as well as plan next steps to address curriculum, instruction and achievement gaps. This incredibly valuable feature within the Question Analysis report will no longer be available for PSAT 8/9 and PSAT 10 when results of April 2020 results are released; in short, educators will not have access to view actual test items for these two tests. Please note that the SAT will continue to be a disclosed form (i.e. test items will still be available) in the 2020 spring administration.
For all of the schools who have been using this particular report with educators, students and parents we realize this news is disappointing. Please know that when MASSP was made aware of this decision we immediately advocated to the College Board and the Michigan Department of Education to change course and maintain this valuable resource for educators. Then Interim State Superintendent Sheila Alles also sent a letter to the College Board requesting that the test items continue to be released. Ultimately it was decided that the need for multiple test forms, requiring a larger secure item pool, and a secure state assessment outweighed the need of educators and students to access the actual test items.
The College Board’s Michigan field team is sharing this information during the SAT suite implementation workshops at multiple sites throughout Michigan during October and November. But these workshops are largely attended by counselors and testing supervisors and MASSP did not want you to learn of this decision second hand. So, to be clear, the College Board will announce that the actual test items used for PSAT 8/9 and PSAT 10 in April will not be disclosed within the report portal, and the test booklets must be returned.
For these non-disclosed forms of the PSAT 8/9 and PSAT 10, the Question Analysis Report will be limited to the percent of students within a school who selected the correct response compared to the district and state, but the percentage of students who selected each response option will not be displayed, and educators will not be able to access the specific question from the assessments. The difficulty level of each item, related cross-test scores and subscores, as well as link to students who answered correctly and incorrectly will be available as shown in the following screenshot of the Question Analysis Report from a non-disclosed form:
Educators will continue to receive performance data related to each test question, including:
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Aggregate and individual student question-level feedback that shows the questions their students answered correctly, incorrectly, or omitted
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How students performed on specific subscores.
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Which state standards map to subscores and cross test scores.
The Question Analysis Report for the Spring 2020 SAT in grade 11 will continue to display student response percentages and will link to the actual test items from the assessment.
To continue to support Michigan Schools, The College Board will release a new resource in Spring 2020. The SAT suite Content Repository will contain questions from multiple released forms of all 3College Board Suite of Assessments. This new resource may be used to provide released questions as formative assessments. Educators will be able to search/filter for questions from each test (Reading, Writing or Math) based on attributes such as: level of difficulty, sub-score, etc. to support their instructional planning. We will continue to work with the College Board to support schools in using the data in the educator portal, and in developing strategies for improvement.
Knowing this is a big deal and many of you will wonder what to do moving forward, Ted Gardella from the College Board will join me for a free webinar on October 23 at 3:30pm to discuss this change and answer your questions.
You can register in advance for this webinar here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JiHPxEfvRFmpE40v9IjNeQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar including a unique access link. If you don’t receive the confirmation link, please email info@michiganprincipals.org for assistance.
You can share any comments with Ted Gardella, Executive Director for the College Board at: tgardella@collegeboard.org
Written by Wendy Zdeb, MASSP Executive Director