Overview

Assessment and standards play an important role at Southern, as they should throughout the educational community. The links below will provide you with a quick glimpse of some of the activities and initiatives in place at Southern.

Southern Regional was a member of The Center on Learning, Assessment, and School Structure (CLASS) almost since its inception.  The core of our assessment efforts and activities have are based on the years of work with CLASS.

In 1997 Southern contracted with IDE Corp. to conduct a technology readiness assessment.  They provided  recommendations in their report titled Next Steps.  Armed with the report, Southern made adjustments to their Five-Year Technology Plan.

In a unique move to create a win-win situation, Art Wolinsky, a district technology teacher, and Technology Director of the Online Internet Institute, retired from the classroom.  By hiring a new teacher at the lower end of the salary guide, the district was able for use the savings to hire him as a consultant to revamp the professional development program.

Standards and Assessment Instruments

There are a number of different standards working at Southern:

NJ Core  and Cross Content Curriculum Standards are used throughout the curriculum.

The American Library Association's Information Literacy Standards an integral part of many classes, particularly technology courses and those that do not have core standards documents.

Southern has adapted the International Society of Technology Education's (ISTE)  National Education Technology Standards (NETS) as the standards on which to base our professional development efforts.

The professional development offerings have been aligned to those standards.

When teachers attain the required level of proficiency, they qualify to receive 3-5 networked computers in their classroom.. This diagram illustrates the pathways to obtaining computers in the classroom.

To establish a baseline from which to measure growth toward professional development goals, teachers were asked to take a self-assessment survey adapted from the Mankato, Minnesota School District.   The survey provided data that assisted in determining areas of weakness and planning a sequence of course offerings to fill the needs.  The survey will be taken annually as one instrument to measure growth at both district and individual levels.   Since the data is collected electronically, it is easily analyzed via spreadsheet or database.

We are currently working with Tom March and Ozline.com to build in assessment and data collection instruments in Web-and-Flow.

NCREL's  Learning With Technology Profile Tool and the CEO Forum's School Technology and Readiness Chart (STaR Chart) are also used in at Southern.

During 1999-2000 we will be developing assessment interments to evaluate the impact of technology on the improvement of writing skills across the curriculum, through the introduction of a 3-D writing program.