Seven years after the Maine Learning Results were adopted, schools are working to create local assessment systems to measure whether students are achieving the state’s academic standards.

The assessments will be used to determine whether students progress to the next grade and whether they receive a diploma at the end of high school.

Seeking to get an idea of the progress being made on developing the series of tests, the Maine Department of Education is studying 18 schools around the state.

The aim is to issue a report at the end of June documenting what the surveyed schools have accomplished and whether they have found the state guidelines and assessment samples helpful.

Among other things, the report will contain information about what helped or hindered schools’ progress; the types of assessments they’re using; how much time teachers have been given to work on the assessment system; how involved the school board and parents were in the process; and to what extent schools relied on the department’s suggested assessments.

“The report is a way for teachers in other schools to get ideas and see what’s working,” Pam Rolfe, the department’s local assessment coordinator, said recently.

Schools will see that the local assessments are “being approached in a variety of ways, that there’s not just a single way to do it,” she said.

Surveyed school systems in the Bangor Daily News readership area are: Caribou, Limestone, Ellsworth, Union 98 (Bar Harbor area), SAD 5 (Rockland area), SAD 64 (Corinth area), SAD 68 (Dover-Foxcroft area), Union 106 (Calais area), SAD 37 (Milbridge area) and SAD 40 (Warren area).

According to state statute, schools must have a comprehensive local assessment system in place by June that includes the state’s standardized test as well as a variety of other measures to determine that each student knows and is able to demonstrate achievement of the Learning Results. Projects, portfolios, essays and oral presentations all may be part of a school’s local assessment system.

As it now stands, students in the 2007 graduating class – this year’s high school freshmen – will be the first group to have to demonstrate mastery of two of the eight subjects in the Learning Results – English-language arts and math – before they can receive a diploma.

If the Legislature approves a waiver requested by Susan Gendron, commissioner of the Maine Department of Education, students in the 2008 graduating class – this year’s eighth-graders – would be the first group required to show they’ve achieved the academic standards, not only in English-language arts and math, but also in science and technology, social studies, and health and physical education. Students from then on would have to meet the standards in all five areas.

Down the road, when additional funding for the Learning Results is in place, all students would have to demonstrate knowledge of three additional subjects – visual and performing arts, career preparation, and modern and classical languages.

According to state guidelines, schools will have to provide at least eight assessments for each subject in the Learning Results per grade span – prekindergarten to fourth grade; fifth to eighth grade; and ninth to 12th grade. Based on five subjects, that would amount to a minimum of 120 assessments throughout a student’s school experience.

The number may seem overwhelming, said Rolfe, but she noted that schools may decide to offer just two assessments per subject per year. The assessments are meant to be administered following corresponding instruction, as opposed to standardized tests, which are given at a certain point in time, she pointed out.

According to state guidelines, many of the local assessments will be scored using a four-point scale. Scores of 1 will stand for not meeting the standard, 2 for partially meeting the standard, 3 for meeting the standard and 4 for exceeding the standard. A portion of the assessments must be scored by different teachers to “ensure consistency,” said Rolfe. The state plans to issue additional guidelines surrounding the scoring process.

Once the set of assessments for a particular grade span is completed, schools may choose to rate students based on whether they earned a specified number of points or on their most frequent score or “pattern of performance.”

Only students who demonstrate proficiency of the Learning Results will graduate with diplomas, according to state guidelines. Local districts may choose to award certificates of attendance to students who have amassed a sufficient number of credits to graduate but haven’t adequately demonstrated achievement of the Learning Results, said Patrick Phillips, deputy commissioner at the Maine Department of Education.

But he emphasized that students would be provided a variety of support systems and interventions such as increased class time, tutoring, summer programs and after-school programs as well as opportunities to retake assessments so they “feel like they’ve had every chance under the sun to learn the standards.”

School systems have a plethora of decisions to make around the local assessments. “There’s a lot of local flexibility,” Rolfe said.

In addition to deciding the types of assessments they’ll offer, school systems also must decide at what point during the grade span they plan to give them.

In SAD 22, Hampden Academy principal Ruey Yehle said the aim is to try to get most of the high school assessments done between ninth and 11th grades so students have time to take replacement tests.

School systems also must develop a policy that includes details about the types of interventions and replacement tests given to students who don’t perform satisfactorily on an assessment.

“The idea is that it’s not a ‘gotcha’ type of assessment. Students who demonstrate low performance will have another opportunity,” Rolfe said.

School systems also must determine the number of times students are allowed to take the new test and whether they can progress into the next grade if their performance isn’t up to speed.

Finally, schools must decide whether students will have to amass a certain number of credits to graduate – the traditional means of determining whether a diploma will be issued – in addition to demonstrating they have met the standards in the Learning Results.

Many schools have decided to incorporate a dual system in which students must continue to take certain prescribed courses for credit and also must pass a certain number of local assessments, officials said.

“This doesn’t change too much about what a student experiences at high school, except for an important shift in awareness about needing to pass all of the assessments,” said Craig Kesselheim, curriculum coordinator at Union 98 (Bar Harbor area). “You could scrape by with a low grade and still get credit for a course, but you can’t fail the common assessment and still graduate.”

Starting in either 2007 or 2008 – depending upon when the Learning Results kick in – each school system is expected to record and calculate student performance information and to report annually the number who didn’t meet, partially met, met, or exceeded the standard on each assessment. No guidelines have been established yet on how this is to be done.

While different assessments will be chosen by individual schools, student performance across the state should be comparable because they all will be based on a common set of criteria, Rolfe said.

For the state’s survey, 18 school systems were chosen last fall based on a number of characteristics, including location, size and progress of the development of their local assessment systems.

After schools answered questions using a written survey, staff from the Maine Education Policy Research Institute at the University of Maine followed up with telephone interviews and on-site visits.

The data are still being compiled, but preliminary results indicate that work on the assessments has gone smoothly in those schools “where there is strong leadership, dedicated staff and provision for time to do this work,” Rolfe said.

Surveyed school systems have been “creative in terms of using every bit of time they have available to devote to this,” she said. They’ve started school late, dismissed students early, and used faculty meetings and professional development days to work on the assessment systems.”

Schools in the study have made more progress on developing the high school assessments than the elementary or middle school assessments, according to Rolfe, who said that’s not surprising given that results across the ninth- through 12th-grade assessments will be used to determine whether a student will get a diploma.

Also, school systems are further along in developing assessments in English, math and science, which also is understandable since the first graduating class affected by the law must demonstrate achievement of English-language arts and math in particular, Rolfe said.