CSAPA Projects and Initiatives

The Center for Student Assessment and Program Accountability (CSAPA) has a role in the development and implementation of all California’s statewide assessment programs, working directly with the California Department of Education (CDE) as the primary contractor or as a subcontractor to other organizations.

CSAPA’s extensive experience in statewide assessment programs includes statewide administration activities, development and facilitation of training for educators, scoring, convening of assessment development meetings (item writing, range finding, standards setting, bias and sensitivity item reviews), and production of resources to support educators and families in understanding statewide testing programs. The following projects represent CSAPA’s current portfolio of statewide assessment work.

California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP)

Working under subcontract with Educational Testing Service (ETS), SCOE’s CSAPA department has a 21 million dollar multi-year contract for work on related to assessment development and validity activities, test administration materials, and educator training to support California’s assessment programs.
To support the CAASPP program, the SCOE team works to recruit California educators to participate in assessment development activities including item development, item review (bias and sensitivity), range finding, and standard setting. SCOE is responsible for recruitment and logistics for all meetings covering all individual assessments within the CAASPP program (approximately 15 meetings per year).

English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC)

In addition to the CAASPP activities described above, the SCOE CSAPA team has a substantial role in the development, implementation, and administration of the ELPAC program.

Similar to the CAASPP program, SCOE is responsible for recruitment and logistics for all ELPAC assessment development activities (approximately 10 meetings per year). SCOE’s most substantial role for the ELPAC program is in the design and delivery of statewide training for the Initial ELPAC and the Summative ELPAC where each year thousands of educators attend to learn how to administer the assessment to English learner students. Other training developed by the SCOE team includes “ELPAC - The Results Are In, Now What” that focuses on accessing, analyzing, and using ELPAC results for program improvement. In addition, SCOE has played a key role in the development of the Alternate ELPAC for students with severe cognitive disabilities. And finally, SCOE is responsible for publishing of Directions for Administration documents and other test administration guidance documents as required.

Communication Resources and Training

On behalf of the CDE, SCOE’s CSAPA team creates written and web-based deliverables to help educators and families understand the statewide assessment system, provide trainings to assessment coordinators and classroom educators, and conduct outreach activities on behalf of the CDE.

Amounting to just over $2 million annually, CSAPA has worked on this contract with the CDE since 2014 and is adept at anticipating the evolving assessment landscape in California and developing comprehensive proposals for the CDE to address the needs of various stakeholder groups.