AZMERIT will be coming up in just a week and a half (It starts April 13 here at Connolly). You may have some questions about what you can expect so I'll try and answer some of them here:
1) Is AzMERIT like AIMS?
The short answer is "no". AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards) measured a student's mastery of the old Arizona standards, which we no longer use. Our current standards, Arizona College and Career Ready Standards are very different so they need to be measured by a different assessment. You can find our new standards here. The AzMERIT will not be only multiple choice questions. In the math portion, students will be asked to solve problems by showing their work and even explaining how they got their answer. In the writing portion, students will be given articles to read, then the prompt that will ask them to write an essay and use the article as a source. The reading portion has a combination of a very few multiple choice questions, selecting sections of the article to support your answers, open ended questions and more.
2) How will this affect my child?
This is the first year that we are using the AzMERIT so for now, it's just being used to find our baseline data and see, overall, how the schools are doing. Once we've been using this assessment for a few years and have gathered enough data on our students' achievement and our own teaching, we'll be able to use AzMERIT more effectively in your child's learning.
3) What can I do to prepare?
The best way to prepare is to follow your school's method to prepare. Most school's have spent much of the year preparing and teaching based on our new standards. If you would like to practice further, you can try out the test for yourself or have your child practice here and just click through until you get to the test portion. At Connolly, we will be completing the test with paper and pencil until the time when we are able to provide one-to-one computers for the students.
If you have any other questions, comment below and I'll do my best to answer as fully as possible. :)
1) Is AzMERIT like AIMS?
The short answer is "no". AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards) measured a student's mastery of the old Arizona standards, which we no longer use. Our current standards, Arizona College and Career Ready Standards are very different so they need to be measured by a different assessment. You can find our new standards here. The AzMERIT will not be only multiple choice questions. In the math portion, students will be asked to solve problems by showing their work and even explaining how they got their answer. In the writing portion, students will be given articles to read, then the prompt that will ask them to write an essay and use the article as a source. The reading portion has a combination of a very few multiple choice questions, selecting sections of the article to support your answers, open ended questions and more.
2) How will this affect my child?
This is the first year that we are using the AzMERIT so for now, it's just being used to find our baseline data and see, overall, how the schools are doing. Once we've been using this assessment for a few years and have gathered enough data on our students' achievement and our own teaching, we'll be able to use AzMERIT more effectively in your child's learning.
3) What can I do to prepare?
The best way to prepare is to follow your school's method to prepare. Most school's have spent much of the year preparing and teaching based on our new standards. If you would like to practice further, you can try out the test for yourself or have your child practice here and just click through until you get to the test portion. At Connolly, we will be completing the test with paper and pencil until the time when we are able to provide one-to-one computers for the students.
If you have any other questions, comment below and I'll do my best to answer as fully as possible. :)