This letter was sent home to parents in October 2018.
Dear Parents and Guardians:
As a district, one of our primary responsibilities is to ensure that each student is provided with opportunities for learning, for challenge and for growth. In order to monitor that growth, we consider data from a variety of sources, including classroom assessments and teacher observation as well as standardized assessments that are nationally normed. This balance helps us to ensure that we are capturing a broad set of data as we consider each individual student’s achievement over a period of time.
Depending on your child’s age and educational experience, they may be assessed using either NWEA-MAP, PARCC, AIMSWeb or ACCESS (for English Language Learners). Detailed information about these assessments, including explanations of sample results can be found on our website (www.dg58.org) under the “Curriculum” and “Methods of Assessment” tabs.
As our educational partners, we also want to ensure that you have access to that data. We have completed our fall benchmarking period, and as of this time all of this data is housed in “SQUIRREL,” our district’s student data portal. Directions to access this portal are at the bottom of this letter, virtually all of you will have already set up an account while registering for parent-teacher conferences.
If your child is in grades 4-8, you will receive the PARCC report attached to this letter, detailing your child’s results on the assessment taken in April 2018. This is a state-mandated assessment that is also nationally normed; while we have not relied on this data for instructional guidance, it is the only data reported to the state and then other entities, and is regularly used as an accountability measure for individual schools and for districts as a whole. Most public ranking systems of elementary schools/districts that include academic measures are using PARCC data exclusively, as it is the only consistent statewide measure.
The goal of all of our assessments – state, national and local – is to provide a clear picture of student achievement. If you have any questions regarding this data you can contact your child’s teacher or principal, or you may contact me directly.
Sincerely,
Justin Sisul
Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction
630-719-5867
jsisul@dg58.org
If you have not yet registered for a SQUIRREL account, please navigate to dg58.us/register where you will enter your email address. Once you have successfully registered you will use your email and password to login to SQUIRREL at dg58.info/squirrel.