Abstract:

One purpose of standardized testing in the United States is to provide parents with information on how their students are facing academically compared to students across the state. However, a problem in many states is that parents do not receive the information in a timely manner. States send paper reports to districts, who distribute them to schools, who then deliver them to parents. Ultimately, some parents never see the reports.

Oklahoma (OK) began a new student assessment program in Spring 2017: the Oklahoma School Testing Program (OSTP). In Spring 2019, the state provided results directly to parents through a secure online portal. Information in the OSTP Parent Portal provides parents with web-based access to their student’s scores on the state summative tests. The data displayed includes an overall score for each subject area and subscores. Parents can log on at any time to see data for their student(s) for the current year and any previous assessment year. The Portal also integrates accessibility tools for persons with disabilities, such as text-to-speech, Braille readers, and zoom features.

Most importantly, the Portal provides links to instructional resources for parents to access and work with their children directly. It also provides the student’s Lexile and Quantile scores to assist parents in determining appropriate levels of literary and mathematics activities for their children. Links to sites such as “Math@home” and “Find a Book, Oklahoma” are provided to help parents use the scores to find appropriate material for their students to use at home. Student results are available to parents within a month after students have taken the tests.

The Portal was created to give parents direct access to student information quickly, eliminating information bottlenecks at the district and school levels, while maintaining student privacy. Security is provided through secure student IDs that are rostered to teachers, schools, and districts. Each student is also linked to at least one parent or guardian who receives information on how to access their student(s) information. In the first three months, the site had 32,933 unique users. Of those, 53.7% accessed the site using a mobile device, underlying the importance of ensuring the results display properly and are digestible on a small screen.

Currently, an external evaluator is collaborating with the OK Department of Education (ODE) to review the site, determining how parents are using it, what works for them, and what they would like to see improved. A piece of the evaluation will explore the use of the resources to determine if and how the activities were used or why they were not. Another piece will focus on parents who have not logged onto the site to determine why not. The evaluation will include parent surveys administered statewide early in the school year followed by focus groups. Respondents who had previously accessed the Portal will be analyzed separately from those who had not. Efforts will be made to include parents with specific accessibility issues, such as English language deficiencies and visual disabilities to determine whether the included tools are sufficient.

This poster session will highlight the design of the site, the intended use, and the evaluation. Both the evaluator and a senior representative of ODE will be present to discuss the steps of the process, the current status of the portal—including a demo, and what was learned in the evaluation.

Keywords:

Educational assessment, web-based reporting, community engagement.