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Date: 12/02/2009
BCPS Leadership Packet
To: Director of instruction, Instructional Specialists, Principals, Student Services Personnel, Title III Coordinator
Date Prepared: 12/02/2009
Prepared by:
Mark Blankenship
Subject: Executive Summary: The Alignment of the Virginia 2008 Science SOL and the VGLA
An important document titled, Executive Summary: The Alignment of the Virginia 2008 Science SOL
and the VGLA is available on the DDOT Web page. In addition to summarizing the findings of the science
alignment study, this document includes information that should be considered by school division staff as
VGLA evidence is collected and scored across all content areas. Due to the implications for instructional and
scoring practices, this information should be shared with teachers, scorers and all other staff members
responsible for the VGLA including Directors of Special Education, Directors of Instruction, Title III
coordinators and building level administrators.
Alignment Analysis of the 2008 Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) Tests, the Virginia
Grade Level Alternative (VGLA) Assessment, and
the Standards of Learning in Science
Executive Summary
The Alignment of the Virginia 2008 Science SOL and the VGLA
In the fall of 2008, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) commissioned Virginia Commonwealth
University to conduct an external review of the alignment of the Virginia 2008 Science Standards of Learning (SOL)
with the SOL tests and the Virginia Grade Level Alternative (VGLA).
This summary addresses findings related to the alignment of the science SOL and the VGLA. The study
examined the extent to which VGLA collections of evidence were aligned with the SOL in four areas: (1) categorical
concurrence; (2) depth-of-knowledge (DOK) consistency, (3) range-of-knowledge correspondence, and (4) balance
of representation.
To conduct the study, an alignment committee which included classroom teachers, division instructional specialists,
and school administrators representative of the various superintendents regions and school divisions throughout
Virginia was convened.
The findings of the alignment review committee indicated that the VGLA collections of evidence were well
aligned with the SOL in all areas except depth-of-knowledge. The evidence included in the collections was generally
at a lower cognitive level than that expressed in the related SOL. DOK reflects the cognitive processing categories of
Bloom’s taxonomy and includes:
Recall Knowledge: This is the lowest level of cognitive process and involves remembering information. At
the recall level, students may be asked to count, define, identify, label, list, match, name, quote, recite,
repeat, reproduce, select, or state content information.
Comprehension: At this level, students may be using or manipulating recall level information in a basic way
such as explaining an idea or concept in one’s own words and may be asked to translate, rephrase, interpret,
describe, classify, compare, contrast, discuss, distinguish, estimate, explain, generalize, give examples, infer,
interpret, or summarize.
Application: This DOK level involves the process of using known information to solve new problems.
Students may be required to compute, construct, demonstrate, illustrate, or solve.
Higher-Order-Thinking: This level combines the three most complex levels of cognitive process in
Bloom’s Taxonomy: analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. At the analysis level, students break down
information into parts to categorize, diagram, differentiate, discriminate, outline, separate, or subdivide
content. At the synthesis level, students combine elements into a whole to integrate, organize, construct,
design, combine, arrange, compile, create, formulate, generate, group, or summarize. At the evaluation level,
students are asked to judge, assess, appraise, value, conclude, critique, criticize, grade, recommend, or
support.
Although, the study only addressed the content area of science, the findings have implications across all content
areas within the VGLA which also include reading, writing, mathematics, and history/social science. To ensure that
VGLA evidence reflects the cognitive progressing of the SOL, the following implications for practice are offered.
1. Teachers collecting VGLA evidence must understand the DOK required in the SOL being defended. In
addition to considering content knowledge and skills being assessed in the stem of the standard and bullet(s),
attention must be given to the verb(s) used in the standard. Focus on the verb(s) will assist teachers in
understanding whether low cognitive processes such as naming or matching are required of the student or
more sophisticated processes such as demonstrating, summarizing, or synthesizing are required.
2. Teachers collecting VGLA evidence must also increase their use of the SOL Curriculum Frameworks. The
Curriculum Frameworks amplify the SOL and define the content knowledge, skills, and understandings that
are measured by the SOL tests. In addition to providing helpful teacher notes and statements describing what
all students should know, the Curriculum Framework provides a bulleted list of student expectations
regarding the standards. Greater focus on the Curriculum Framework will assist teachers in providing
appropriate instruction to students and collecting evidence that reflect the rigor of the standard.
3. VGLA scoring training papers which include anchor papers, practice papers and qualifying papers will need to
reflect the DOK stated in the standards. If the appropriate DOK of knowledge is not addressed in the
evidence, the evidence can not receive the highest score point.
4. In the review and scoring of evidence, local scorers and external auditors must consider whether the
appropriate DOK is included in the evidence in the assignment of the rubric score point.
Additional Information is available in the
2009-2010 VGLA Implementation Manual (p. 10 and p. 26)
Contact For Further Information: Mark Blankenship
Phone: 540-586-1045
E-mail: [email protected]