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Assessment test windows for the 2024-2025 school year have been updated and posted on the NDDPI website.
Recent updates have been made to the assessment section of NDDPI's website. These updates include a refresh and expansion of the ND A+ page, a revamp of the Lexile and Quantile information, and a newly created archive page with NDSA and ACT historical information.
State Assessment Growth, also known as Student Growth, is an indicator in the Elementary Accountability System. The calculation to determine student growth looks at the current year and prior year scale scores from the state summative assessment. As we move to the ND A+ Summative and away from the NDSA, we will have a one-year span in which the scale scores will be determined by two different assessments. Also, revisions were made to the Math and ELA K-12 Education Content Standards, changing from the 2017 to the 2023 versions. NDDPI’s accountability team has discussed the impact of these factors on the Student Growth indicator, and the current plan is to prepare an effect analysis study to ensure correlation, validity, and reliability in the calculation after the first operation administration of the ND A+ Summative and the important, educator-led, standard setting process. This will allow us to compare the calculation of student growth to previous years.
NDDPI did collect alternative options and ideas from our state Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and gathered information on what other states have done in similar situations. Other options include implementing a carry-over/repeat year (simply using the growth information/data/score from last year) or possibly applying for a federal exemption to waive student growth for a one-year time period.
NDDPI has already started conversations with a third-party vendor to assist in the analysis of the growth calculation from this coming year and compare it to student growth outcomes from previous years. There are more conversations that need to occur within the NDDPI Accountability team and also with the ESSA State Implementation Planning Committee before anything is finalized. These will include considerations about a possible “plan B” if the analysis is decided upon as the path forward and it produces results that would be deemed inappropriate to use.
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The ND A+ ELA Summative Assessment will take a new approach to student writing. This new approach offers a more balanced reading load and two opportunities for students to demonstrate their writing ability. Rather than being given one prompt with two longer reading passages that students must synthesize to generate a single essay, students will receive two unrelated prompts, each with a single reading passage, and write a short essay response to each prompt separately. Each short essay response is scored using a 10-point rubric. An average of the scores earned on each short essay response is taken to provide the student's writing score. Example: A student scores 9 on their first short essay response and 7 on their second short essay response. The average of the two scores (9+7= 16, 16/2= 8) provides the total points out of 10 applied to the student's final ELA score. In this example, the student would receive 8 out of 10 possible points for the writing portion of their score. Responses to the writing prompts contribute up to 10 points toward the student's total ELA score.
Please take time to review the newly updated ELA blueprints for the ND A+ ELA Summative Assessment.
The previous blueprints were based on an early assumption of a 4-point writing rubric. The updated blueprints are based on the confirmed 10-point writing rubric.
The updated blueprints provide the percentage of each reporting category tested, based on points rather than the number of items. To reflect more accurately how each reporting category contributes to the overall test score, you will notice slight percentage shifts from the original blueprint in the final column, “Approximate Portion of the Test.”
Finally, additional clarifying notes regarding the writing portion of the assessment are also included in the new blueprint.
The blueprints are available on the ND A+ Portal under the Administration Resources tab.
Virtual weekly office hours will be held throughout the school year on Thursday afternoons from 3:00 - 4:00 pm CT. These meetings are designed to allow school and district personnel to drop in, ask questions, and have open conversation about the ND A+ assessments.
As we continue to hold weekly office hours, we thank those who have been able to join us thus far and kindly ask everyone to take a few minutes to respond to this short survey to help us offer the best possible support.
Join via the Microsoft Teams link below or by downloading the calendar invite.
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Did you know...that 88,891 ND A+ Interim Assessments were submitted and scored during the fall window. Students in grades K-12 in over 90 North Dakota school districts, tribal, and private schools participated in these assessments. Additionally, 19 North Dakota schools utilized Navvy, the ND A+ formative assessment, in October 2024. North Dakota students at these schools completed 972 competency and practice checks to target, personalize, and accelerate their learning. |
 Curious about the ND A+ (North Dakota Academic Progression of Learning and Understanding of Students) assessment system? Various supports and resources are available to help you learn more.
ND A+ Overview Video: A brief video overviewing the ND A+ assessment system is available on the ND A+ Portal.
ND A+ Blueprints: Blueprints have been developed with the help of North Dakota educators. The blueprints show the range of state standards covered in the assessments, the reporting categories, and the percentage of items and score points by reporting category. The blueprints inform the test design for both the ND A+ Summative and ND A+ Interim assessments. The blueprints are available on the ND A+ Portal under the Administration Resources tab.
ND A+ Achievement Level Descriptors: Achievement level descriptors (ALDs) have been developed with the help of North Dakota educators. ALDs define, based on the North Dakota Content Standards, what students classified into each achievement level are expected to demonstrate. The ALDs are available on the ND A+ Portal under the Administration Resources tab.
Graphic: A summary graphic of the ND A+ assessment system visualizes the three assessments in the system, briefly mentions the use and purpose of each assessment, and overviews some highlights of the system.
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