Achievement District Test Coordinator Updates
March 18, 2024 |
Achievement District Test Coordinators (DTCs),
All students who are enrolled and in attendance during the statewide test windows are expected to test. There are no provisions in Arizona state law for parents to opt their students out of testing nor medical exemptions for state testing, including AASA, AzSCI, ACT Aspire, and ACT assessments.
Schools do not need parent permission to test students. The Arizona Attorney General issued an opinion about parental opt out of state tests. You can find this under the "Legal" tab on our website at https://www.azed.gov/assessment/technical-and-legal-resources. Please schedule makeup testing as needed during the test windows in order to test all students.
Remote Learning Software
Many districts and charters have installed remote learning software to monitor students' computers and view the actual screen of a student or classroom. This software causes concern that impacts test security during the administration of statewide assessments.
TestNav will exit out of a test if a student tries to access an application, browser, or program; however, remote learning software is not initiated by the student, but rather by a teacher or test administrator. ADE is strongly recommending to any LEA that has this type of software loaded on their teachers' / test administrators' computers to disable this during actual testing. If it is not disabled and students' screens are accessed during the test, it may result in having any accessed student test to be invalidated.
Examples of remote learning software include LANSchool, Hapara, Net-Ref, Apple Classroom, and there may be others.
It is important that you communicate with your technology specialist at your district/charter or school level. If the software is launched or used during administration of any of the statewide assessments, this could result in individual and group invalidations. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us with any questions.
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General Testing Reminders
Students who have withdrawn from your school/district/charter do not need to be removed from PearsonAccess Next (PAN). PAN is not used for Accountability purposes, so these records can safely be left in PAN as is.
High school testing (AzSCI, ACT Aspire, and ACT) is by cohort rather than by grade level or courses completed or enrolled in. The cohort is assigned when a student first enters 9th grade and stays with them throughout high school, regardless of actual grade level or courses completed. The STUD78-Cohort Verification Report in the AzEDS Portal in ADEConnect can be used to verify a student's cohort. Please contact us at Testing@azed.gov if you have questions about a student's cohort.
Achievement Assessments Office Hours
The Achievement Assessments team will be holding optional office hours on the following dates and topics. To attend, please use the registration links below. A Teams meeting invitation will be sent to all registered attendees prior to each Office Hours session.
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Work Requests - AASA, AzSCI, and ACT Aspire
Reviewing and Approving Work Requests
Please check each PearsonAccess Next (PAN) site daily for work requests that may be waiting for approval. District Test Coordinators should look for the red bell at the top of the screen. The red bell indicates that a work request is pending approval to transfer a student. These transfers need to be completed in a timely manner so that students may be set up for testing after they have transferred to a new school. |
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Please use the following guidelines when approving work requests for AASA, AzSCI, and ACT Aspire.
- If a student has not started testing, APPROVE the work request.
- If a student has completed one or more test units, but has not completed the entire test, APPROVE the work request.
- If a student has completed all test units of the assessment, REJECT the work request, and indicate in the Comments field, "Student has already completed testing."
Adding New Students and Submitting Work Requests
When adding a new student to PAN, DTCs should first try to create a work request. This will allow for the student to be moved from their previous school to their new school if the student record already exists in PAN. When creating Work Requests, please do not make any adjustments to the student record prior to submitting a Work Request to transfer the student as this creates errors and delays the transfer of the record. The most common issue ADE is seeing regarding Work Requests is that when districts who are receiving a new student try to create a Work Request to move the student, they are receiving the following error. |
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Another indication of the error would be that you are unable to select any other school from the "Change Enrollment From" or "Change Enrollment To" dropdowns (with the exception of your own schools).
When creating a Work Request to receive a student coming from another district, please be sure you are in your district/charter entity in PAN and are not adding your organization to the student record before creating the Work Request. Once the Work Request has been approved by the releasing school/district, the organization will update in the student's record automatically.
if the "Student not found" error is received when attempting to create a Work Request, then a new student record can be created. |
ACT Aspire Updates and Reminders
Policy Reminders
- Spanish Text + Audio is not allowed. It is shown as an available accommodation for ACT Aspire in PearsonAccess Next, but it is not to be applied per ADE policy. Doing so would result in a student's test being invalidated.
- Do Not Report - Illness is shown as an available option in PearsonAccess Next, but it is not to be applied per ADE policy.
- Will Not Test - Parent Opt Out is shown as an available option in PearsonAccess Next, but it is not to be applied per ADE policy.
Chat with an Expert
Pearson will hold a second ACT Aspire Chat with an Expert session on March 21 at 9:00am. Registration is not required to attend this event. If you have questions about ACT Aspire, please use this link to join the session in Microsoft Teams.
ACT Updates and Reminders
For issues during ACT testing, please contact ACT at 319-333-1567. This is an Arizona-specific ACT number, and any technical issues or concerns that occur during testing will be prioritized.
MyACT
Please see the ACT website for information about students completing MyACT. Resources are included under Step 4: Preparation, under the heading "Complete Non-Test Activities." Students may complete the non-test information in MyACT before testing and up to two days after completing testing. This may be completed on a separate day from actual testing. Students who set up a MyACT account will have the opportunity to send their ACT scores to up to four colleges or scholarship agencies for free and will receive their test results faster than waiting for paper score reports to be delivered to schools.
ACT State Use Questions
Arizona will not have state questions on the ACT this year. The state questions are mentioned on page 74 of the ACT Online Testing Administration Manual. When students see the "State Questions" screen ahead of the online ACT test, they can skip to the next step. |
Bethany Spangenberg
Deputy Associate Superintendent of Assessment
Arizona Department of Education
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Joseph M. Guzman, Ph.D.
Associate Superintendent of Standards, Assessment, Accountability and Research
Arizona Department of Education |
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