SAGE Interim
SAGE Interim Assessment
If you have a student in Garfield School District in grades 3rd- 11th you have probably heard them talking about the “SAGE Interim” Assessments. I would like to discuss the SAGE Interim to provide parents and students with additional information. All parents should have received a letter from their building administer discussing the SAGE Interim Assessment and time line. Your first question might be, ‘why are we always testing’? To answer this question, the Utah Legislature and the Utah State School Board continue to require additional accountability in the form of testing by all districts in the State of Utah. If you review the following timeline, you will see how the Legislature and the Utah State School Board have required student testing.
· 2009-2013 districts participated in computer adaptive testing pilot program.
· 2012 Legislative session HB 15 required the development of computer adaptive tests.
· 2012 the Utah State School Board directs the process for obtaining an assessment contract to test students online.
· 2013 the State Board of Education directs the development of the computer adaptive assessment SAGE. The end of year SAGE Assessment is implemented by all districts in the spring of 2014.
· August 2015-2016 school year all students in the State of Utah will be required to participate in a beginning, middle and end of year SAGE Assessments.
If districts chose to not administer the tests, they would lose state and federal funding. Garfield School District receives approximately 10 million dollars each year in state and federal funding. During the month of January, the students in our District will be involved in the SAGE Interim Assessments. Typically, the Interim test will take approximately 90 minutes to complete each subject. Interim Assessments will be used to demonstrate student’s growth each year and provide valuable intervention and progress monitoring results to students, parents, and classroom teachers. Also, students who participate in the Interim Assessments will be more familiar with SAGE testing tools which; in turn, will help students achieve higher scores on the end of level SAGE Summative Assessments. Parents and students should view the SAGE Interim administered this January as a practice test to help students prepare for the testing at the end of the year. During parent teacher conferences, teachers will discuss the individual student scores and show you the resources available to students, parents, and teachers identified in the testing. If you would like to review the SAGE program or sample questions, parents can access the tests at: http://www.sageportal.org/training-tests . Please take time to access the web page so you can be familiar with computer adaptive assessments. If you have questions I can answer relating to the SAGE assessments please feel free to call me at 435-676-8821. I would be happy to visit with you.
–Superintendent Ben Dalton
