Building Teacher Skills in Assessment

CRDG’s Linda Venenciano is serving on the leadership team of the Hawai‘i State Network of Educators (SNE), one of twenty-six state-based teams working with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to help build a digital library that will provide resources to help teachers develop their skills using formative assessment. The program aims to help teachers balance summative assessments benchmarked to college and career readiness, teacher resources for formative assessment practices to improve instruction, and flexible interim assessments, all based on the Common Core State Standards and aiming for college and career readiness for all students.

In Hawai‘i, the SNE is made up of seventy-five educators who will, over the course of five training sessions, review and provide feedback on the resources in the library. The eight-member leadership team, on which Venenciano serves, is tasked with identifying, recruiting, and training the Hawai‘i SNE members, monitoring the twenty-six SNEs’ reviews of resources and making final publishing decisions, and providing overall leadership to the SNEs. Venenciano is one of two members of the state leadership team from higher education. The project is scheduled for full implementation and launch of the digital library in the 2014–2015 school year.