ThinkLink tests designed to gauge student progress

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

COX

While TCAP achievement test results can give teachers and administrators a decent picture of a student’s academic progress, one drawback of the standardized state test is that results are not received until the end of the school year – too late for struggling students to receive any additional instruction.

To alleviate this problem, and help raise TCAP scores in the process, next school year Warren County Schools will institute ThinkLink, a formative test assessment which will be given to students in grades two through eight.

“Instead of just looking at TCAP scores, which we get only once a year, this will allow us to get real-time, accurate data so we can know where a student is struggling right now,” said school system director of instruction Bobby Cox.

Described as a shortened version of the TCAP, ThinkLink is currently being used as TCAP practice for second-grade students. But with the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act, as well as other new accountability standards, Cox said system officials now feel the need to institute the tests system-wide.

ThinkLink, which tests the same criteria as the TCAPs, will be administered to students across the county three times a year. The first test given in September is used to gauge how much knowledge students have retained from the previous school year.

A second test is given around December or January and should show how much of the curriculum students have learned during the first semester. The third test is given in February. Results from this test are supposed to be a direct indication of how students will perform on the TCAPs.

Because ThinkLink is administered by researchers at Vanderbilt University, teachers and administrators can get the test results quickly, with a normal turnaround of three weeks. And these results, said Cox, are broken down by grade level, teacher, student and even by question.

“The information teachers receive from the results is great feedback,” Cox said. “With ThinkLink we get real-time data and can better adjust our instruction on the run.”

To help county teachers tweak their instruction during the school year, the school board recently approved two additional teacher in-service days. Teachers will use these days to analyze the data they receive from the tests and use it to adjust their teaching likewise.