District Reading Assessments
The Williamson County Assessment which assesses letter-sound knowledge, phonemic awareness, concepts of print, and written language development is administered to kindergarten students.  Students in Grades K-3 are also assessed with DRA K-3 and students in Grades 4-5 with DRA 4-8 or Burns & Roe to identify an appropriate text level for reading instruction. Students in Grades 2-10 are also assessed 2-3 times per year on IAI to measure growth in reading.

Individual Assessment Index
IAI is a computerized assessment of student progress in mastering basic skills in reading and mathematics. The assessment has been designed to assess the essential skills of the Tennessee State Standards. The assessments help teachers to know how to help each student learn and grow by determining where each student is performing academically.  IAI assessments will be taken on a computer by students in grades two through seven.  The difficulty of each test question is based on how well the student has answered the previous question. As the student answers correctly, the questions become more difficult.  If the student answers incorrectly, the questions become less difficult.  The computer program instantly analyzes the student’s response to each question and determines the appropriate difficulty level to present throughout the remainder of the test. In essence, the computer builds an assessment that is just right for each student. Instead of the child adjusting to a test, the test adjusts to the child.  Thus, each child is appropriately challenged at his or her instructional level.

The scores from the IAI are used to measure a student’s growth in reading and mathematics.  The growth of the student in these areas is measured from fall to spring. For example, if a student obtained a RIT score of 190 on the fall math test and a RIT score of 199 on the spring test, the student progressed 9 RIT points.  Parents and teachers will be able to chart a student’s progress from one year to another. When you look at the test results, it will become apparent that certain goal areas are progressing well and others need more attention. Using the class and individual test reports, school personnel can use the results, along with other classroom data, to design instruction that better meets the individual needs their students in reading, and mathematics. The goal of the assessment system in Williamson County is to improve student achievement.
http://www.nwea.org/products/LearningContinuum.htm 

TCAP Achievement Test
Each spring students in grades 2-8 take an achievement test, known as the Terra Nova, as part of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP). The primary aim of the TCAP Achievement Test is to provide an accurate measure of academic basic skills in reading, vocabulary, language, language mechanics, mathematics, mathematics computation, science, social studies, spelling and word analysis. Content knowledge in these subject areas is assessed as well as the application of such knowledge. The TCAP Achievement Test uses multiple choice questions and has set time limits. There is no passing or failing grade on the test. These tests allow district and student achievement to be compared with the performance of other students in the nation, and also tell how well students are mastering skills in these subjects. The national average on the chart above is 50%. http://www.state.tn.us/education/tsachhome.htm

 TCAP Writing Assessment
The writing assessment at these grade levels is designed to measure writing skills that have been learned cumulatively from the current year as well as past schooling years. The TCAP Writing Assessment requires students to compose essays in response to a specified prompt within a designated time. Fifth-grade students are asked to compose a narrative essay, eighth-grade students an expository essay, and eleventh-grade students a persuasive essay. The writing samples are scored holistically.
http://www.state.tn.us/education/tswriting.htm

 District Writing Assessment  
The district office creates writing prompts which are administered in September, February and May so that student writing samples can be assessed to identify instructional targets for writing throughout the year in grades K-12. 

Assessment Homepage