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1997 Knowledge and Concepts Examinations Results for Grades 4, 8, 10


I. Introduction

II. Content of the WSAS Knowledge & Concepts Examinations

III. Understanding the Data

IV. 1996-97 WSAS Knowledge & Concepts Examinations Results:

I. Introduction

What's in This Report?

The 1996-97 Knowledge & Concepts Examinations: Results for Grades 4, 8, 10 provides the district comparative report for the Wisconsin Student Assessment System (WSAS) published in Volume 1 of the Wisconsin Statewide School Performance Report: Wisconsin Districts & Schools Within Districts. In addition to a basic summary of the results of the test administered in October 1996, this document provides background information, answers to commonly asked questions, descriptions of the content measured, illustrative test questions for each subject area, column information, definitions, a Normal Curve Equivalent to National Percentile Rank Conversion table; and the 1996-97 summary results of the Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Grade Knowledge & Concepts Examinations.

Other volumes of the Wisconsin Statewide School Performance Report include: the Wisconsin Reading Comprehension Test: An Assessment of Primary-Level Reading at Grade Three (reported in Comprehension Performance Report Summary by District and by School Within District); and the 1996-97 Wisconsin Statewide School Performance Report, Volume II (forthcoming) will include other student performance indicators such as ACT scores and graduation rates, as well as opportunity-to-learn indicators (e.g., drop-out rates, attendance, finance, and staffing ratios).

Where Can I Find Additional Information?

Schools and districts received many types of scores and reports to assist in interpretation of their own WSAS Knowledge and Concepts Examinations results. Contact the district assessment coordinator in your local school district for inspection copies of the tests, scoring guides and keys, and writing anchor papers. Summary data that is disaggregated by demographic categories such as gender, race/ ethnicity, and regular education status is available on our web site and also from each district. Additional scores including scale scores and national stanines are also available.

Questions about this report should be addressed to:

Background Information about Wisconsin Student Assessment System (WSAS)

Section 118.30, Wisconsin Statutes requires the state superintendent to adopt or approve examinations designed to measure pupil attainment of knowledge and concepts. The tests measure student knowledge in the areas of reading, language arts (including writing), mathematics, science, and social studies. A voluntary career interest survey is also administered at grades 8 and 10.

The purposes of the testing program are to:

  • provide clear expectations for student learning.
  • provide student achievement data related to the expectations.
  • use assessment methods that promote high-quality curriculum and instruction.
  • provide feedback to students to assist in educational and career planning.

The results of the WSAS testing are used by the Department of Public Instruction as an accountability measure for school improvement in order to:

  • meet its statutory requirement of identifying low performing schools as stipulated by s. 115.38(4), Wisconsin Statutes;
  • meet federal Title I, Improving America's Schools Act (IASA) requirement of using high-quality assessments to determine how well children are learning;
  • meet federal Title I (IASA) requirement to determine adequate yearly progress in Title I schools; and
  • determine the extent to which schools and districts across the state meet the state's proficiency standards.

State law requires all students to be tested. Exceptional Education and Limited-English Proficient students who meet DPI Guidelines for Non-Discriminatory Testing must be included in testing. Under federal law, the department is required to provide for inclusion of all students in the statewide assessment and accountability system.

Current law prohibits using the results of the examinations to evaluate teacher performance, discipline teachers or as a reason for contract nonrenewal. Further, a district's scores may not be used to determine its general or categorical aids. The tests are required, to the extent possible, to be free from bias.

School boards are to provide appropriate accommodations for certain limited English-Proficient (LEP) and exceptional educational needs (EEN) pupils; and may exempt certain others of these students that are not yet proficient in English or that are enrolled in a non-regular academic curriculum. In addition, a parent or guardian may request that their 4th, 8th or 10th grade pupil be excused from taking the tests.

Commonly Asked Questions

  1. Why did a new vendor provide the test and testing services this year?

    State procurement rules require that contracts be reviewed annually and re-bid every three years. The purpose for this is to ensure that minimum costs and high quality of services are maintained through competition and review of current vendor offerings.

    Each time a new set of instruments and their provider is selected through the competitive bid process, the specifications for the examinations are evaluated.

    The current vendor is CTB/McGraw-Hill providing instruments from their new TerraNova series. The previous examinations were from Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement's Stanford 8 series. The current tests were selected using department content guidelines.

  2. Can this year's results be compared to last year's when the tests were published by different publishers?

    Yes, a set of Linking Tables were provided to each district assessment coordinator. You may download an electronic version of the Terra Nova Tables (Excel 5.0, 165K), the 8th grade Writing Tables (Excel 5.0, 200K), or the 10th grade Writing Tables (Excel 5.0, 300K). Through use of a technique of equipercentile linking, translations can be made of the 1996-97 and the 1995-96 data for purposes of comparison at a local level.

  3. Why are the tests called 4th, 8th, and 10th when they are administered in the Fall of those grades?

    The tests are designed to sample from content that students generally should have learned up to that point in school career. In future years, the WSAS examinations will be known as "Elementary, Middle, and High School Level Examinations."

    Achievement tests are designed with questions that have a range of difficulty. Some challenging content must be included in order to provide for advanced proficiency. Comparisons are provided with state and national norm groups that completed the examinations during the same time of year.

  4. Are Average Grand Composite Scores across the subjects available?

    No. In past years, Wisconsin has held schools accountable for the average performance of students across all subject areas. Wisconsin is in transition towards a new accountability system based on high academic standards in each of the five assessed content areas.

    The first step in this transition is to hold schools accountable for the achievement of students in all five subjects. Low scores in one content area, such as mathematics, will not be offset by high scores in another, such as language arts. Beginning in 1997-98, proficiency scores in each assessed content area will be used for accountability purposes.

  5. Why are school and district scores based on the scores for all students tested, including special education students?

    In past years, scores reported in the School Performance Report have excluded results for special education students, i.e., students with disabilities and limited-English proficiency. Approximately 13 percent of the students enrolled in Wisconsin are special education students. Recent changes in federal law and Wisconsin policy require that all students be a part of the Wisconsin accountability system.

    Scores reported in the School Performance Report have been changed to include scores for all students. But this change alone does not provide for all students' accountability because in some schools and districts many students are not tested.

  6. Why didn't all students take the tests?

    Student test participation rates vary widely from school to school and district to district. Some schools test fewer than half of their students and others test 100 percent. Students may not have completed the tests because the student was:

    • Absent. The student was unavailable to take the test when given by the district or to participate in make-up testing, scheduled by the district, during the three-week testing window.
    • Excluded. Certain students with disabilities or limited-English proficiency were excluded by districts from testing because they have not learned the content covered by the test, they would have had difficulty with the test format/procedures even with testing accommodations, or for other reasons. Students at the lowest levels of English proficiency are required to be excluded from testing by state rules.
    • Excused. A small number of parents or guardians requested that children be excused.

  7. How will schools be held accountable for all students enrolled, including students not tested?

    1996-97 is a transition year for state and federal accountability. Since no scores are available for students who are not tested and accountability will be based on average scores in each subject, students who are not tested are not part of the accountability system this year. We encourage the public to review the information provided in the attached tables about test participation and question districts that test unusually low percentages of their students.

    Beginning in 1997-98, schools will be held accountable based on the proportion of all students enrolled who score in the proficient or advanced categories in each subject. If, for example, only 75 percent of students are tested, then a maximum of 75 percent can score in the proficient or advanced categories.

  8. How can the public get a true picture of schools serving populations with diverse educational needs?

    Test results will be disaggregated by gender, race/ethnicity, regular education status (excluding students with disabilities and limited English proficiency), and other demographic factors (when available). These disaggregated data will be provided at our Web site.

    Although schools will be accountable for the performance of all students, we believe that wide dissemination of disaggregated test results will help the parents and the community better understand the learning of various populations in schools. We hope these data will promote constructive, focused discussions involving school staff and the public in order to devise ways to improve learning of all students in each school.

II. Content of the Examinations

Note: This Web version contains links to descriptions of knowledge and skills measured in each subject area. The paper version of this report also contains sample test questions.

Description of the Examinations

The Knowledge and Concepts Examinations are an overall measure of achievement in Reading, Language Arts (including writing), Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. Each subject area test includes about 75 percent multiple-choice items and about 25 percent constructed response or short-answer items. Each student also completed a rough draft, writing essay after reading a short passage about the assigned topic. The total test time was about six hours.

The multiple-choice items are machine-scored; the short-answer items are hand-scored by trained scorers and each item is assigned a specific performance level. The performance levels on these short answer items range from 0 to 1 point on some items to 0 to 6 points on others. The writing assessment is scored holistically. Each essay is rated by two professional readers, each of whom assigns a rating from 1, the lowest score to 6, the highest. Then the ratings of the two readers are averaged to produce a single score. If the readers' ratings differ by more than one point, a third reader assigns an independent rating. The reported score is then the average of the two closest scores. High levels of score accuracy and reliability are maintained by frequent retraining to calibrate the readers as well as systematic monitoring of the scoring process.

The Self-Directed Search (SDS) administered to Wisconsin 8th and 10th graders is a voluntary career interest survey designed to stimulate interest in vocational planning, provide information on career options, and suggest ways to get additional information about careers.

Students completed the SDS using a scannable answer sheet, and each students receives a computer-generated individual "Interpretive Report." Teachers, guidance counselors, and parents receive interpretative information to help guide students to obtain the maximum benefit from their individual reports.

The SDS feedback is most useful for individual students and is not addressed in this report. The career interest survey is provided by the WSAS at two points in what should be an ongoing conversation with the student in their lifework planning.

Objectives and Sample Items for Each Subject

The following section identifies the objectives measured in each subject area. The paper version of this report also provides a few illustrative examples of test questions for the three grade levels tested. The objective statements in italics indicate the processes measured by constructed-response short answer items only. During 1996-97, Level 14 was administered to Grade 4, Level 17 was administered Grade 8, and Level 19 was administered to Grade 10.

III. Understanding the Data

About the Results

The WSAS examinations are comprised of a battery of achievement tests which provide data generally collected under standardized conditions. The data for a particular student, school, or district can be fairly compared to other Wisconsin students taking the test at the same time of year as well as compared with the results of a nationally representative norm group.

Data reported in this report are for "all students" tested. Performance on each content area examination can be compared with comparable groups of students. The test questions are presented in an integrated fashion and reported by subject rather than question type (multiple choice, short answer). Writing scores are reported in two ways: an average criterion-referenced (holistic) raw score, as well as with national comparisons.

A set of Linking Tables is also provided to districts in order to assist them in comparing the 1996-97 test results on the CTB/McGraw-Hill TerraNova achievement battery with those produced by the prior contractor, Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement's Stanford 8 achievement battery. See the Introduction for how to obtain additional information.

Whenever information is collected, there is some error of measurement. Caution should be exercised in interpreting scores and ranks when very small numbers of students are tested. This year one-third of the students took each writing essay, so some fluctuation in the essay scores can be due to sampling when there are very few students in a school.

Column Information

Data for each reporting level (state, district, and school) are presented as follows:

  • Total Enrollment: shows the number of students indicated by the school at time of testing. In some cases, where data were missing or miscoded, the number of students reported by the school on the third Friday in September was used.
  • Percent Tested: shows the percent of students taking each content area test.

For the purposes of this Wisconsin School Performance Report, Volume I the following summary results are provided:

  • Mean NCE: Mean of the Normal Curve Equivalents (NCE) of the scale scores. See definition 1.
  • Nat'l %tile: National Percentile Rank of the Mean NCE is the group's normal curve equivalent converted to the national percentile rank scale. Where the NPR is not provided (see writing), consult the conversion table to make the conversion from NCE. See definition 2.

Note: Districts received 1996-97 writing reports which provided a National Percentile Rank of the Median NCE. The median NCE should not be used to compare to prior years' Nat'l %tile of the Mean NCE.

  • Mean Holistic: The Mean Holistic score is the group's average raw score for writing using a 6-point rating scale. This is a criterion-referenced score. See definition 3.

Definitions

  1. Mean Normal Curve Equivalents of the Scale Scores. The normal curve equivalent (NCE) is a derived score used to compare scores across the tests. The NCE scale ranges from 1 to 99. It coincides with the national percentile scale at 1, 50, and 99. NCEs have many of the same characteristics as percentile ranks, but they have the additional advantage of being based on an equal-interval scale. The difference between two scores on the scale has the same meaning throughout the scale. This property allows you to make meaningful comparisons between different achievement test batteries and between different tests within the same battery. One can compare NCEs obtained by different groups of students on the same test or test battery by averaging the scores for the groups. The Mean NCE is the average of the individual students' in the group.
  2. National Percentile Rank of the Mean NCE. The national percentile rank (NPR) of the mean normal curve equivalent indicates the relative standing compared with others in the same grade in the norm (referenced) group. The ranks range from a low of 1 to a high of 99, with 50 denoting average performance for the grade. A percentile rank refers to the percentage of students in the norm group who fall below a particular point. Note that percentile ranks are not equal interval data and differences between percentile ranks are larger near the ends of the range than they are in the middle. Therefore, they are not suitable for computing averages. When not otherwise provided, NPR of the Mean NCE data can be converted from reported NCE data using Table 7.
  3. Mean Holistic. The Mean Holistic score reflects average, overall writing performance on each prompt based on scoring criteria provided. See a longer description of the writing scoring criteria in section II. Table 2: Writing. The following is the holistic guideline of the score descriptors:

    ScoreDescriptors

    1. Superior development; fine use of language
    1. Well organized; few errors in language
    1. Organized; adequate use of language
    1. Scant development; frequent language errors
    1. Poor organization; weak language mechanics
    1. Little coherence; language; errors obscure meaning
    1. Unscorable, illegible, in another language.

Excerpted from the Writing Assessment Guide by CTB/McGraw-Hill, 1993.

Normal Curve Equivalent Corresponding to National Percentile Rank

Note: Since NPR of the mean NCE was not reported for writing, this table will be of particular interest for when using the reported scores for writing. An example illustrates the difference between interpreting NCEs and interpreting percentile ranks. Consider a school with a mean NCE of 53 on a Reading test and a mean NCE of 45 on a Mathematics test. One would be correct in saying that the Reading score was eight points higher than the Mathematics score. However, expressing the comparison as a difference in percentile units, which are not equal-interval data, is inappropriate.

IV. WSAS Knowledge & Concepts Examinations 1996-97 Results

1997 knowledge & concepts examinations data

The School Performance Report: Results for Wisconsin Districts and Schools within Districts, Volume 1 contains information on the performance of the fourth, eighth, and tenth grade students who participated in the statewide assessment during the October 1996 administration. The results for each district and for each school within districts are provided in the files below. (Data are for public release on July 25.)

Click on the grade level of interest to download the Self-Extracting Excel 4.0 file summarizing results for all students, including special education students. You need Microsoft Excel or a spreadsheet program that can read Excel 4.0 files to view the downloaded files.

1996-97 Knowledge & Concepts Examinations Disaggregated Results

Download the Self-Extracting Excel 4.0 file summarizing results for all regular education students, excluding special education students, in the grade level of interest:

Additional summary statistics and analyses of these results will be added to this site as they become available.

For more complete information regarding statewide testing programs, see:

For questions about this information, contact dpispr@dpi.wi.gov (608) 267-9619

Last updated on 2/28/2008 8:23:22 AM
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