How One Missouri School District Is Succeeding With USATestprep

Published: March 18, 2019, 8:23 a.m.

Farmington R-7 School District has been using USATestprep at varied grade levels for more than 5 years. We were thrilled (doing the happy dance), when they wrote us a letter telling us the five things they love about our NWEA MAP-aligned solutions based platform.

5 Reasons We Love Using USATestprep

  1. The items in each database are rigorous and there are various types, including selected response (MC), short answer, free response, and various types of technology-enhanced questions.  The ability to author our own questions and add them to our “favorites” is a game changer because it allows teachers the flexibility to still express their creativity in assessment design. The discussions that occur when our staff members are working on assessment now center on DOK, rigor, and how each item may or may not meet the standards that they are trying to assess. This program has helped improve teachers understanding of assessment design.
  2. The items in each of the test databases are closely aligned with our state standards... When we see an item that we think is misplaced, we click the feedback button and send a short explanation and always hear back quickly from the content person at USATestprep.
  3. The item banks have multiple questions for each standard at varying levels of Depth of Knowledge. This allows us to develop formative as well as summative assessments to use with our students.  It also enables the students to do some review on their own by accessing their account and doing practice.
  4. The staff is extremely easy to work with on a regular basis, either via email or phone. They respond quickly to any format of contact and are always pleasant and helpful when teachers have questions or report an issue. Our state recently changed standards in all areas and the team at USATestprep quickly worked to help set up new test-aligned databases so our teachers could develop new summatives.  They were also responsive when the state blueprint changed and were able to quickly change the percentages on the custom assessment.
  5. The instant student and teacher feedback is a huge plus for the program. The students know immediately how they did on the assessments and then when the teacher enables them to review items, they can see what they got wrong and right. Teachers love the ease of the reports, the ability to grade the items quickly... and especially the item analysis feature that helps them see which parts or whole standards where re-teaching needs to occur.  

To learn more about how USATestprep can be used to develop common summatives, formatives, and also for remediation and enrichment assignments, request a free trial.