Finger Lakes Alternative Assessment Program: Cohort 2

Finger Lakes Alternative Assessment Program: Cohort 2
Addressing the NYS Standards, Assessments and Beyond

Overview:
This three-year professional development program is aimed at helping teachers develop curriculum, instruction, and assessment strategies to help students attain the NYS Standards. The program also includes an administrative staff component aimed at developing mechanisms for supporting teachers' work and design efforts.

FLAAP 2 will measure its success in helping students attain the NYS Standards in a variety of ways. These include: a) scores on the NYS ELA tests; b) scores on project-design performance assessment tasks; and, c) achievement as determined by teacher-developed classroom assessments.

Target audience:
Teachers who are interested in developing strategies for meeting the NYS Standards and preparing students for different state tests are invited to apply. We especially encourage

teachers in grades 3 and 4 and English teachers
in grades 7th through 12 th and building
administrators that work with those teachers. We also encourage teams with one teacher who is responsible for Language Arts and another teacher who teaches another subject.

Overall program outcomes:
As a result of this program, participants will:

Develop and use integrated curriculum, instructional, and assessment strategies for helping all students attain the NYS Standards.
Develop authentic learning and assessments experiences that increase students' probability of success on the NYS assessments.
Develop a professional portfolio to document their learning processes and processes.
Assess the impact of their own learning on students' performance through action research.
Engage in adult learning and staff development activities.

Year I Activities:

, Identification of elements of powerful learning experiences

Curriculum mapping and analysis of congruence between desired learner outcomes and teaching practices
Analysis of the task demands of the NYS ELA tests and other pilots and prototypes when available.
Development of parallel tasks to the ELA tests and other available NYS tests.
Development of curriculum lessons and assessment experiences, including, performance, portfolio, and process assessments that support NYS Standards.
Compilation of a professional portfolio.

Year 2 Activities:

Development and implementation of Standards-based assessments
Implementation of parallel tasks.
Development of integrated NYS Standards-based curriculum units.
Use of data on students' performance on state tests and on parallel tasks to develop and refine learning and assessment experiences.
Refinement of a professional portfolio.

3

Year 3 Activities:

Participants will select to work on one or more working strands. These strands are:

Integrated curriculum unit design
Performance assessment design
Action research design and implementation
Professional writing
Staff development program design.
Technology use and integration

Program structure:

Six full days of training during the school year
A five-day summer institute
Five half-day regional meetings held three-four weeks after each of five full-day programs.

In the third year, the structure of the program would include the following components:

Six full days of training during the school year
A five day summer institute
Four full-day and topic-based meetings held in different regions 3-4 weeks after each of the five full-day programs.

Program evaluation:

This program will include a comprehensive evaluation design.

1. pre-post data on teachers' assessment
practices;
2. end-of-program reflections on participants' goals, curriculum and assessment learning needs, and accomplishments 3. portfolio data on implemented practices

4. pre-post data on a treatment-comparison study of students' achievement on Language Arts

and mathematics authentic assessment tasks 5. comparison-treatment data on students'
achievement on the 4th and 8th grade NYS ELA and math test.

Program staff:
The lead consultant for FLAAP 2 will be Dr. Giselle O. Martin-Kniep, Additional program development staff includes: Diane Cunningham and Jo Slovak. Selected programs and events will be co-facilitated or include the participation of FLAAP I teachers and administrators.

5