VALDOSTA, Ga. – Scintilla Charter Academy is one of 15 school districts in Georgia that will be using an alternative innovative testing program to assess scholars during the 2019-2020 school year.
Navvy, a testing pilot program approved for use by the Georgia Department of Education, is a flexible diagnostic assessment system for grades 3 through high school English and math. The program provides on-demand assessments that are given throughout the school year and is designed to provide detailed feedback about students’ understandings of specific standards or learning targets.
Navvy allows students multiple opportunities to demonstrate their understanding of each standard. With flexible administration, real-time diagnostic feedback, and multiple opportunities to succeed, SCA officials feel this is an integral tool for teaching and learning that will help provide a personalized education for every student, according to the Navvy website.
With recent federal approval, Navvy results, which are calculated through multiple assessments throughout the school year, can be summarized and reported at the end of the year allowing districts to avoid taking a separate state exam. Thus, schools can focus all 180 school days on teaching and learning, using Navvy for feedback to guide instruction along the way.
“I am proud that Georgia continues to be a national leader in pursuing flexibility for our schools and students,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said in a statement to GPB’s Education Matters Blog. “A maximum of seven states will be selected to participate in this demonstration authority, so Georgia is in a distinguished group.”
Woods went on to say that for the benefit of students, continuing to rethink assessment in the state of Georgia is necessary and that he would keep pursuing a change in state law to get state testing requirements in line with the federal minimum, along with a more realistic use of test scores for accountability purposes.
“We strongly believe that a child’s performance should never be defined solely by their performance on a single end-of-year test,” said Mandy Avera, Dean of School. “The goal of educating children for the 21st century should not be consumed by narrow measures meant to track progress. Our assessment approach must be designed to recognize learning for what it is, a process, and not simply a product of what a child has learned determined through the administration of one lengthy standardized test at the end of the school year.”
The timeline for schools participating in the Navvy pilot consortium having the ability to waive participation in the Georgia Milestones assessment has not yet been determined by the Georgia Department of Education, however, SCA scholars’ individual reports with detailed information on mastery of each specific standard will be included with the report cards for grades 3-6 for the remainder of the school year.
SCA’s teachers recently participated in Navvy training and are looking forward to using the assessment data to guide teaching and learning.
