WA Teacher: We View Smarter Balanced as a Teaching Tool

Alisa Louie, an English Language Learner Specialist, Interventionist and Teacher Coach at Evergreen Heights Elementary in Auburn, WA, wrote a guest blog on Ready Washington’s Medium channel about assessments and Smarter Balanced.

She made two important points that are often overlooked regarding testing and Smarter Balanced.

Wrote Louie, “At my school, we view the Smarter Balanced assessments as a teaching tool. They are a piece of the puzzle along with report cards, teacher feedback and classroom work that creates a complete picture of a student’s progress in school.”

And, later in the blog, she discussed how quickly her school receives student testing results back and how that helped with classroom instruction.

“Last year, educators at my school got results back in three weeks. We were able to adjust our instruction accordingly based on the skills students had mastered and where there were learning gaps.”

In most Smarter Balanced states, 90 percent of the scores are returned within two weeks. Teachers can use those scores to adjust their teaching and use Smarter Balanced to help form the overall progress of a student.

Read Louie’s full blog post here.