You don’t need to go far to hear about the staffing woes in our schools, and the most critical needs are within the special education and school psychologists' departments. These education professionals and their peers, including SLPs and reading specialists, need to assess more students than ever to identify the students who need instructional, speech, and mental health support — with less time and fewer resources at their disposal.
Digital assessments can simplify these processes, giving valuable time back to these educational professionals... time that can be spent supporting the students who need it most.
Allison Wells, a school psychologist for the North Shore School District in Bothell, Washington, and a Digital Assessment Library for Schools (DALS) user, was happy to give us a firsthand account of some of the ways digital assessments have benefited her and her students. “With digital assessments, I have the whole Pearson assessment library at my fingertips, so I can easily pivot. If I sense that a student is struggling with a skill outside the original assessment, I can pull up a subtest on Pearson’s Q-interactive® and get the information I need in one session rather than scheduling an additional testing session with a different assessment kit.”
Wells also credits DALS with her streamlined budgeting and inventory process. “I used to order all the materials for our entire group of psychologists. It was stressful at the beginning and end of the year to coordinate the inventory and ordering needs for 32 locations. By bringing in digital assessments [through the Digital Assessment Library from Pearson], I am less stressed, and we are redefining the stipend originally associated with that clerical task to expand professional development to the entire team.”
Students are also already accustomed to using digital tools such as iPad® devices, which increases their engagement during an assessment. “We wanted to be on the same page as our students,” Wells explained. “Giving the assessments on an iPad has turned it into a game. Students see how quickly they can go and immediately see the standards and how they did. We can have a conversation about the results before meeting with their parents and others at the school to make students part of the process.”
4 tips for bringing digital assessments to your school or district
While a successful transition to digital assessments requires support from school and district leaders, it’s just as important to get buy-in from the professionals who will be using them, including school psychologists, speech pathologists, special education teachers, and reading teachers.
Before Wells’ school district fully adopted DALS, they conducted a pilot study to collect feedback on the process. After administering a digital assessment, each educator completed a five-question survey about ease of use, level of student engagement, time to complete (compared to paper assessments) and the educators’ ability to access subtests.
“That gave us a good foundation to take back to our director to show the benefits. They agreed and asked for a cost analysis,” Wells reflected. “We looked at every role in the district with a level of decision-making on this so we could anticipate any challenges.”
This detailed analysis involved adding up every expense associated with assessments, including:
- The cost of upgrading kits when a new version is released
- The amount of time spent on inventory management
- Annual inflation
“As a result, we increased our materials budget for the first time in eight years. It was time-consuming up-front, but collecting data and recognizing that the process would take time builds the momentum needed to make the transition,” Wells shared.
Wells knew decision-makers also needed answers to two additional questions:
- How would tech glitches be handled?
- And what strategies could be used to encourage staff members who may be uncomfortable with technology to participate?
The following four strategies helped the North Shore team overcome those concerns:
- Put iPad devices in educators’ hands when introducing the idea rather than simply saying, “these are cool, interactive tools.”
- Create easily accessible reference materials that include a quick to-do list. The district launched an assessments web page with basic tips such as ensuring:
- The tablets are always charged
- They are connected to the correct network
- Their software is updated
- They are restarted at the beginning of each week
- Provide opportunities for educators across the school or district to share “lessons learned” to support one another in adopting digital assessments.
- Identify a contact person in the IT department and partner with them to develop communication strategies for addressing specific technology-related challenges.
It’s a given that assessments need to be administered to students, so finding ways to ease your professionals’ burden of time not only supports your staff members, but it also enhances the support and time your students receive. “We can all log in and see a student’s results across multiple areas, which has given us a more comprehensive evaluation,” Wells shared. “In the past, a speech-language pathologist could only see a student’s pragmatic or social language skills results. Now they also see academic skills like reading or writing and we can connect on how best to help the student.”
Take the next step toward digital assessments
To learn how Pearson Assessments can help you bring digital assessments to your school or district, visit our Digital Assessment Library for Schools page and find your local consultant on our assessment consultant locator page!