Five years ago when Scantron, a leading education testing and assessment company serving the K-12 industry, began planning an upgrade of its state academic standards alignment process for its two assessment platforms, it turned to Academic Benchmarks. Not only did Academic Benchmarks streamline the process plus migrate and translate current alignment data, Academic Benchmarks reduced the anticipated upload time by half—from one year to six months. Since then, Academic Benchmarks’ standards database has become embedded in Scantron’s system, enhancing Scantron’s delivery of assessment products to school districts across the country.

Client Snapshot
Scantron provides assessment content via the Internet through two platforms—computer- adaptive assessment and formative assessment. These two web-based solutions provide school districts and educators a choice in assessment delivery and reporting, and the assurance that their state’s academic standards correlate to its assessment and test items.

Challenge
Due to the need for a well-organized system for maintaining standards data, Scantron looked to Academic Benchmarks to facilitate a new procedure that would expedite and improve the standards upload process.  Scantron’s powerful web-based, district wide assessment solution, Achievement Series®, allows K-12 educators to develop and administer online and paper-based tests, capture immediate results, and produce standards-based reports. Its computer-adaptive diagnostic test, Performance Series®, provides individualized assessment and learning plans
for all students. Both products required a consistent method to provide standards and the ability to align test items for their clients. Scantron needed the capacity to build a process on which it could deliver a sustainable mapping system integrated across its content partners.

The AB Solution
Academic Benchmarks captured national, state, and custom standards in an accessible format that is interoperable with Scantron’s extensive network of content partners.  By using common platforms for transporting and formatting the data, a system was developed that allows educators to create tests--through Scantron’s Achievement Series® product—or reference state standards and generate reports through its computer-adaptive product, Performance Series®. The unique standards identification system (AB GUID) created by Academic Benchmarks is the framework beneath all of Scantron’s standards operations —its own “state standards center.”

Action
Academic Benchmarks streamlined the standards process and moved quickly to provide the tools and services for a state alignment for all 50 states.  Scantron was able to use the standards data feed and the Academic Benchmarks’ meta-database of concepts and skills, the Common Terms Catalog (CTC), for the initial alignment. The Academic Benchmarks capture process now enables Scantron to effortlessly update its system when a state updates its standards, specifically the core four content areas--mathematics, English language arts, science, and social studies.

Result
Scantron’s platforms are maintained with regular updates of new or revised standards, and the platforms are interoperable with vendors and educators. These features put school districts and educators in control and able to facilitate more customized instruction. For teachers, a platform enables choice of assessment items and standards already aligned in the system. For school districts, the platform makes integrated reporting possible (e.g., tracking student performance on a particular standard by district).  The result is that educators can quickly create, deliver and assess online standards-defined tests that immediately evaluate student learning and impact instruction through a system developed by Scantron and a standards database provided by Academic Benchmarks.

Academic  Benchmarks  •  www.academicbenchmarks.com
8805 Governor's  Hill  Drive,  Suite  200  •  Cincinnati,  OH  45249  •  513.898.0534