hawaii formative assessment item bank - ets home hawaii formative assessment item bank quality...

Hawaii Formative Assessment Item Bank

Built for or aligned to Hawaii Content and Performance Standards

Sample Items Item Development and Quality Guide

H A W A I IF O R M A T I V E A S S E S S M E N T I T E M B A N K

Contents

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

ETS Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Item Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-4

Quality Reading Passages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Item Bank Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-9

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Overview

Aligned to Hawaii Contentand Performance Standards

Effective Testing Starts with High-Quality Test Items

Interim or formative assessment is only as good as the items chosen for it. Each itemneeds to measure the standard at the appropriate cognitive level. Teachers need usefuland accurate information to make the best use of their limited analysis and planning time.No one wants ineffective testing.

The Highest Quality Test Items Come from ETS

ETS® Formative Assessment Item Bank provides thousands of high-quality Mathematicsand Language Arts items for grades K-12, with thousands of new items added everymonth. All items are newly developed and specifically built for or aligned to the HawaiiContent and Performance Standards. The standards, including the identified tested statestandards, are provided as part of the Formative Assessment Item Bank, so educatorscan create customized assessments that measure progress on the critical standards students need to master.

The ETS Formative Assessment Item Bank contains the HIGHEST QUALITY items because they

• Are newly developed for this item bank

• Are built for or aligned to individual state standards

• Vary in difficulty and measure a range of cognitive levels

• Adhere to the principles of good item writing, based on industry standards

• Use age-appropriate vocabulary and sentence structure

• Are written in logical and realistic contexts

• Use response options that are all plausible

• Provide item stems that are clear and easy to understand

• Are created by ETS’s experienced staff of test developers, reflecting ETS’s commitment to unsurpassed quality in test and item creation

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2


ETS Quality

Why is it important to have a high-quality item bank?

You need high-quality items to get high-quality assessments that are accurate and useful.

• Items must be fair, valid and reliable to create fair, valid and reliable tests.

• A test is only as good as each item on it. If items don’t really measure the

standard, the test results will not be useful.

• Instructional decisions should be made on the basis of valid assessments.

• Teachers need good data to make better use of their limited instructional time.

• Older, repurposed items often do not address today’s instructional standards.

How does ETS ensure that the Item Bank addresses my state standards?

When ETS generates an item bank for a state, we follow these steps:

• Review the state content standards on the state’s Web site.

• Review the released state test, tested standards and test blueprints on the

state’s Web site.

• Call the state department of education to verify we have the most current

standard and testing information.

• Create binders of state standards and test information (including released items

if available) and distribute to the item development and alignment teams.

• Create spreadsheets of state standards using the state’s verbiage and

numbering system.

• Use the state’s specifications for developing new items.

• Develop items that address the lowest measurable tier of the state standards.

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Item Development

What is the item development process and why is it important?

For more than 50 years, ETS has set the standard for educational measurement andresearch. From that experience, ETS has developed a set of guidelines and standards toensure the quality of items developed.This is important for fair, valid and reliable testing andis intended to help assure that only construct-relevant factors affect test takers’ scores.

Formula for Success — The ETS High-Quality Process

1. Develop item writing guidelines.

2. Review and edit the items internally at ETS using trained assessment specialists and content editors. Items are accepted only if they meet the following criteria:

• Match to Objective — One of the key principles in writing items is thateach item will demonstrate a specific match to the selected objective or standard. ETS requires each item writer to establish clear, close correspondence between the objectives and the test items.

• Excellent Technical Quality — In developing items for the item bank, ETS focuses on technical quality. For multiple-choice items, technicalquality includes such matters as fully stated stems (the student understandswhat is being asked before reading the response options), balanced responseoptions (no one conspicuous answer choice), plausible and reasonable distracters, absence of clueing between stem and answer choices, clarity and brevity.

In addition, each item is reviewed to ensure that it

• Has only one correct answer

• Clearly presents one central idea

• Is at the appropriate level of difficulty

• Contains clear, direct, unambiguous language that is appropriate for the grade level and English-language learners

• Uses age-appropriate vocabulary and sentence structures

• Tests worthwhile concepts or information

• Reflects current research-based teaching practices

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• Appropriateness to Purpose — To ensure items reflect sound and current educational practices, ETS writers use their experience to consider theeducational significance of each item. Item content is carefully crafted to ensurethat what the item is measuring is important, and that it can be successfullytaught and learned as part of standards-based instruction.

• Difficulty Level — The items in the Formative Assessment Item Bank represent a full range of difficulty (high, medium, low), as appropriate to the standards being measured. The experience of our item writers as educators, particularly as teachers, has helped them determine appropriate difficulty. The Item Bank is designed to offer items that are appropriate throughout the school year for each grade level.

• Cognitive Level — The items represent a full range of thinking skills, as appropriate to the standards being measured. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy, eachitem is classified as requiring one of the following thinking skills: Knowledge,Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis or Evaluation.

3. Review and edit items to verify their compliance with ETS Fairness (bias and sensitivity) Guidelines.

All ETS assessment specialists who review items for the Formative AssessmentItem Bank received specific ETS Fairness Review certification and are especiallyaware of the need to eliminate the use of discriminatory language, content, andbias in test items. Compliance with the ETS Fairness Guidelines is important for valid testing. The guidelines are intended to help assure that only construct-relevant factors affect test takers’ scores. The groups of primary concern forthese reviews are classified by age, disability, ethnicity, gender, national origin,race, religion and sexual orientation.

4. Review and edit the items for style, consistency, grammar and accuracy.

ETS maintains a large editorial and proofing staff whose members have manyyears of experience specifically reviewing test items for publication. The items inthe Item Bank are designed to be as accurate as possible, and numerousreviews help assure this goal.

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Quality Reading Passages

ETS reading passages represent a range of topics and types:

• Fictional texts (e.g., stories, folktales, legends, myths)

• Literary essays

• Informational texts (e.g., science, biography, persuasive, multicultural)

• “How to” articles

• Brochures or advertisements

ETS reading passages are held to high standards for interest, readability and accuracy.Each passage is designed to function as a whole, having a beginning, middle and end. ETS passages must meet the following criteria:

• High-interest passages that appeal to all demographic groups

• Passages of various lengths, from paragraphs to multiple pages

• Multiple items for each passage, measuring a variety of standards

• A variety of topics (including science and social studies)

• Passages written specifically for the item bank, as well as previously published passages from books and children’s magazines

• A mixture of text types, including informational text, literature and poetry

• Readability appropriate to the grade level based on graded word lists, the Flesch-Kincaid readability formula, and professional judgment

Read this sentence from “Two Little Sparrows.”

She looked most annoyed.

What does the word annoyed MOST nearly mean?

A uncomfortable

B disappointed

C gloomy

D bothered


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Grade 5 Language Arts:

Accompanying literary passage title:“Two Little Sparrows”

HI-LA05-3.2.3 Apply knowledge of word origins, derivations, synonyms, antonyms,and idioms to determine the meaning of words and phrases.

Sample Items Aligned to HawaiiContent and Performance Standards

The item requires students toidentify a synonym.


7

Which sentence could BEST be added at the beginning of Paragraph 4 to attract the attentionof the reader?

A Make the most of your middle school experience.

B One of my favorite teachers was Ms. Tanaka.

C I learned the most in my science class.

D One benefit of middle school is being able to choose

your elective classes.

Read the following sentence.

Neither my sisters nor I am attending the concert.

Which shows the proper subject-verb agreement of the underlined part of the sentence?

A Neither my sisters nor I be attending

B Neither my sisters nor I is attending

C Neither my sisters nor I are attending

D Leave as is.



HI-LA08-6.2.1 Develop and support a thesis or stance by synthesizing informationfrom texts, others, and own experience.

Accompanying language passage title: “A Letter to Sixth Graders”

The item assesses importantusage skills.

HI-LA10-7.1.1 Continue to develop facility in use of punctuation, mechanics, usage,vocabulary/spelling, and parts of speech introduced in grades K-9.

The embedded error passageprovides students with anexperience similar to correctingtheir own rough draft or participating in peer reviews.Students must have a senseof the whole passage in order to determine the mosteffective information to add tothe paragraph.

The graph shows the number of each color gumball Kelsey has.

Which tally chart matches the information in the graph?

A C

B D


8

Grade 3 Mathematics:

What is the measurement of the unknown angle in the figure below?

A

B

C

D

Grade 5 Mathematics:

The item assesses grade-appropriateunderstanding of geometric properties.

The item mirrors a grade-levelappropriate activity students mayhave done in the classroom.

HI-MA03-DA.11.4 Represent data in more than one way (e.g., bar graphs, pictures,pictographs, data sets).

HI-MA05-GE.5.4 Use logical arguments to justify conclusions about properties andrelationships of shapes and lines in the plane.

Gumball Colors

Color

Nu

mb

er

20181614121086420

Green Red Pink Yellow

Gumball ColorsGreen Red Pink Yellow




135º

?º

45°

135°

360°

55°


HI-MAAL1-PF.10.7 Solve quadratic equations in one variable algebraically,graphically, or by using graphing technology.

Which quadratic equation has as its roots?

A

B

C

D

Algebra:

Answer options are based on commonerrors that students make.

1 ± 13

2

x2 x 3 = 0

x2 x + 3 = 0

x2 + x 3 = 0

x2 + x + 3 = 0

9

ETS products and services are designed to improve schoolperformance and student achievement. For more information aboutthe Formative Assessment Item Bank and the SYSTEM 5TM suite of solutions, log on to www.ets.org/k12learn, or call usat 1-866-ETSLEARN.

52636

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