 The A+nyWhere Learning System (A+LS) contains over 130,000 test items designed to determine whether students have mastered specific skills. These items can be administered to students in a variety of methods that are described below.
A+LS provides districts the capability to conduct short and frequent assessments targeted to specific content standards, benchmarks, and performance standards. These assessments can be utilized to adjust, or “course correct,” individual instructional plans.
The American Education Corporation (AEC) also offers A+ LearningLink, an online standardized/predictive assessment that can prescribe lessons to A+LS for student instruction, based on the results.
Closing the loop between assessment and instruction
The A+nyWhere Learning System’s assessment capabilities were primarily designed for instructional planning also known as formative assessment. Most commercially-sold curricula such as reading and math come with placement tests. The tests are used to help make decisions such as into which textbook the student should be placed, or to identify the parts of the scope and sequence the student knows. Assessments in A+LS are designed to understand important information about students’ formation of knowledge, understanding, and performance so that proper instruction can be given. This is the purpose of the assessment technologies in A+LS.
Below is a complete listing of the assessment capabilities contained within the A+LS.
Quick Links:
 State Standard Assessment
The A+nyWhere Learning System has been developed with an emphasis on aligning assessments to specific national, state, and local learning objectives (standards). This alignment drives prescriptions that can include all resources that the school or district has at its disposal.
AEC has developed and integrated alignments into the A+LS management system for all states and most national standards-based tests.
The A+nyWhere Learning System is aligned to:
- All individual state standard sets.
- TerraNova, SAT 9 and 10, ITBS, and TABE.
- Additionally, the alignment tool within A+LS provides the means to align additional instructional materials such as textbooks with various content standards.
Assessments in the A+nyWhere Learning System test students on specific learning objectives as defined by any standard set that a school or district chooses, providing educators with the additional capability to easily assign students, individually or in groups, all instructional content designed to address a particular objective or set of objectives.
 The following graphic is a screen shot of the Standards Management Window from the A+nyWhere Learning System.
This window shows the relationship between:
- The standard set and the skills necessary to master each standard.
- Where the skills are taught in the curriculum content.
In this screen, the standard “Employs literary devices” has been selected.
- The standard is found in the Language Arts subject in the Writing for Grade 8 strand of the Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum.
- The dropdown menu in the top right panel reflects the skills that are necessary to master the selected standard.
- The bottom right panel shows the curriculum activities that teach the necessary skills.
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 Course Assessments
A+LS Course Assessments provide a comprehensive evaluation of the knowledge and skills that are taught in an A+nyWhere Learning System course/title.
Course Assessments are available for every course/title in the following curricular areas:
- Mathematics (18 courses/titles)
- Language Arts (50 courses/titles)
- Science (14 courses/titles)
- Social Sciences (15 courses/titles)
For each title/course, a course assessment is available that:
- Can be used as a pre-test.
- Tests students on every learning objective for the course.
- Provides a record of the student mastery of the course material via two scores:
- Percentage of questions answered correctly.
- Report of the skills for which the student showed mastery.
- Can prescribe lessons for those objectives that have not been mastered, thereby shortening the time required to master the course objectives.
- Provides a record of student learning to state standards because the course assessments are mapped to state standards.
Adaptive Assessments
Adaptive Assessments are available to educators in A+nyWhere Learning System and can be used in four major ways.
Adaptive Assessment Overview
The A+LS Adaptive Assessment engine:
- Generates tests “on the fly,” selecting test items based on the skills that need to be tested.
- A+LS automatically picks the test items to be presented, based on educator input.
- The skills included in an Adaptive Assessment depend on the skills selected for assessment and the skills the student masters during the test.
- This adaptive assessment tool adapts to both educator need and student response.
Uses of Adaptive Assessments
 Skill-level Assessments
A key use of Adaptive Assessments is to test students against specific skills linked to A+LS content.
In this scenario, the educator:
- Selects the skill(s) and tests every student on every skill on the list.
- For example, a teacher who wants to test the students on their knowledge of basic fractions before teaching a unit would create this assessment for the class to gauge their skill level.
- Then, following instruction, the same students are tested on the same skills. This method provides the teacher with the data to drive instruction on a specific skill set and the ability to see the outcome after instruction.
- Lessons can be automatically prescribed based on students’ assessment results.
 Short-cycle Assessments
Short-cycle assessments are increasingly common for districts as they implement skill testing in the quarter leading up to state mandated achievement tests. Short-cycle assessments are also invaluable in RTI models where student skill knowledge and lesson mastery need to be constantly monitored.
- Each test is designed to assess the students’ knowledge of essential skills as determined by a state or district pacing guide.
- Tests can be saved and reused by teachers throughout the school or district based strictly on the pacing guides.
- Lessons can be automatically prescribed based on students’ assessment results.
 Individualized Assessments
A third type of adaptive assessment can be employed for completely individualized student instruction. Again, an assessment is created by selecting particular skills to test.
The difference is that the assessment can be configured to adapt to the student’s performance.
- If a student demonstrates mastery of a skill, A+LS will test the student on a more difficult skill.
- If the student does not demonstrate mastery of the skill, A+LS will test the student on the skills that are prerequisite to the tested skill.
- This adaptive assessment technology can be used to pinpoint a student’s abilities with minimal exposure to failure.
- The teacher controls the number of steps up or down that are allowed from a skill level in one Adaptive Assessment.
- Lessons can be automatically prescribed based on students’ assessment results.
 District-level Performance Assessment
The A+ District Driven Assessment is a special application of the adaptive assessment technology. With an emphasis on snapshots of school and district performance at various points through the year, the A+ District Driven Assessment offers district administrators the ability to see the progress that schools, classes, and students are making throughout the year.
These short and frequent assessments will show how schools, classes, and students are progressing in their mastery of the standards at a time when instruction can be modified and directed to affect the outcome of the yearly state high-stakes assessments.
Key Features and Benefits:
- Administrators create assessments by selecting individual standards, usually according to the curriculum map or pacing guide.
- The assessments are automatically assigned to students according to the date range specified.
- The tests are automatically delivered to the student at the time determined by the administrator. The students’ assignment lists are overridden by the A+ District Driven Assessment.
- Results are available to the administrators that show where the classes and schools are in relation to standards needed for success on highstakes state tests.
- Teachers have the option – as soon as a test is completed – of having A+LS prescribe instruction to immediately address the identified skill deficiencies.
The A+ District Driven Assessment tool is available for use with the A+nyWhere Learning System for grades 1–12 in the subject areas of:
- Math
- Reading
- Language Arts
- Science
- Social Sciences
A focused picture shown by A+ District Driven Assessments will allow skill deficiencies to be immediately addressed, thereby influencing the snapshot.
For example, an administrator can get a quick picture of all third grade students’ understanding of a specific state standard at a specific point in time. With this tool, administrators can more effectively form instruction for the entire school or district.
 Tests in Lessons
Another important type of assessment in the A+nyWhere Learning System is the testing provided within each lesson. A bank of test items, provided with most lessons, is used for practice on essential knowledge and skills and the assessment of mastery.
These test items are used in four ways:
- Practice tests
- Pretests
- Mastery tests
- Review tests
Teachers can also create review tests at any time to monitor student performance:
- At any point in the instructional cycle, the teacher can have the program give the student a test that will review all the skills taught in the previous lessons on the assignment list.
- Review tests are useful in promoting retention of what has been learned and prevents students from moving too quickly through lessons.
- Holds students accountable for learning the assigned lesson material.
 Scaled/Predictive Assessment
A+ LearningLink is an online, authentic formative assessment that measures a student’s existing knowledge, comprehension, and mastery of basic skills in language arts and mathematics for grades one through eight. This assessment shares many of the same psychometric properties as high-stakes assessments without the stakes. It is standardized on a developmental scale that can place students at the right level, predict performance on standardized tests, and track progress over time. Most importantly, it can link assessment results directly to instruction.
Key Features and Benefits:
- Placement - Placement is determined because A+ LearningLink is standardized on the Lexile® and Quantile® scales. Currently, nineteen states report the results of the annual achievement tests on the Lexile scale, as do many of the national tests such as SAT-10, ITBS, and Terra Nova. Because A+ LearningLink places students on these scales, students can be matched with appropriate instruction, and the level of their achievement can be reported in a way that is far more accurate than a grade equivalent.
- Prediction – Teachers and administrators can forecast how well a student is likely to perform on state achievement tests, required by NCLB, that report on the Lexile and Quantile scales. This provides another indicator for teachers to effectively target instruction.
- Prescription – The results of A+ LearningLink allow for the automatic prescription of lessons at the student’s level in the A+nyWhere Learning System, and direct links to other materials that are also calibrated on the Lexile or Quantile scales. This assessment provides a direct link from assessment to instruction. It is the ultimate in data-driven instruction.
- Progress – Student progress can be monitored over multiple administrations of A+ LearningLink. Growth paths can be plotted, and interventions can be more effectively planned with the knowledge of the student’s growth rate.
Recommended use – The most powerful use of A+ LearningLink is to administer it twice each year:
- In the fall, to establish a benchmark for the year and to focus on the areas where differentiated instruction is needed. It is a universal screener.
- In the winter, to track progress, plot a growth trajectory, make additional corrections prior to the state-required achievement tests, and to predict results for those tests.
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