State Testing Schedule

Dear Parent/Guardian at Catharine Blaine K-8:

This spring your student(s) in grades 3-8 will take the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) tests in math and English language arts (ELA).  Students in grades 5 and 8 will also take the Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science (WCAS).

Students will take the tests online.  Middle school students will take content area tests during their regular content area classes.  For example, the ELA test will be given during your student’s ELA class period over a few days. Our school is scheduled to take the tests May 5 – June 6.  Specific grade level schedules are included at the end of this letter.  Please send your student to school with their charged SPS laptop and headphones on their testing days.  The headphones will need to be the plug-in type; the testing platform does not work with Bluetooth.

In the weeks leading up to testing please help your student maintain a charged SPS laptop.  We are experiencing a lot of laptops that deplete their charge to 0% and then require reimaging, which is a lengthy process.  Maintaining a charge on student devices appears to alleviate this issue.  We do not have enough laptops to keep up with the demand of repair and reimaging.  Your help with this is greatly appreciated and will help ensure students are able to participate in testing with their classes.

For more information about the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) and Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science (WCAS) tests, visit: OSPI State Testing page  and select on the name of the test.

To try out an online Smarter Balanced practice test or WCAS training test, visit: Washington Comprehensive Assessment Program (WCAP) Portal

Please call or email me if you have questions about state testing.  My email is wbbernard@seattleschools.org.  My phone number is 206-252-1920.

Thank you for your continued partnership. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to better support your student.  We want your student to leave us with a solid foundation of skills and a future full of opportunities.

Sincerely,

Wendi B Bernard
Testing Coordinator
Catharine Blaine K-8

Grade	SBA Tests and Dates
3rd Grade	ELA Computer Adaptive Test: 5/20 ELA Performance Task: 5/22 Math Computer Adaptive Test: 5/27 Math Performance Task: 5/29 No Science test for this grade.
4th Grade	ELA Performance Test: 5/19 ELA Computer Adaptive Task: 5/21 Math Computer Adaptive Test: 5/27 Math Performance Task: 5/29 No Science test for this grade.
5th Grade	ELA Computer Adaptive Test: 5/6 ELA Performance Task: 5/7 – 5/8 Math Computer Adaptive Test: 5/14 Math Performance Task: 5/15 Science WCAS: 5/22
6th Grade	ELA Computer Adaptive Test: 5/6 – 5/8 ELA Performance Tasks: 5/13 – 5/15 Math Computer Adaptive Test: 5/20 – 5/22 Math Performance Task: 5/28 – 5/29 No Science test for this grade
7th Grade	ELA Computer Adaptive Test: 5/6 – 5/8 ELA Performance Tasks: 5/13 – 5/15 Math Computer Adaptive Test: 5/21 – 5/23 Math Performance Task: 5/28 – 5/29 No Science test for this grade
8th Grade	Science/WCAS: 5/5 – 5/6 Math Computer Adaptive Test: 5/7 – 5/9 ELA Computer Adaptive Test: 5/12 – 5/14 Math Performance Task: 5/15 – 5/16 ELA Performance Tasks: 5/20 – 5/22

Week of June 2nd: Make-Up testing for all grades testing.  8th Graders to Camp Orkila 5/27 – 5/30.  Note that testing window closes on June 6th.