We are excited to announce a number of new features and enhancements to FastBridge. This release is focused on adding new valuable resources, and improving the quality and usability of FastBridge across several key areas:
● Expanded Assessment Solutions
● New Training Opportunities to Learn about FastBridge and MTSS
● New Intervention Materials
Highlights:
● Introducing FASTtrack Reading
● AUTOreading approved for full usage in FastBridge, removed from Lab Status
● Group Screening Report enhancements for Leader and Teacher roles
● Introducing FASTflix
● Clever for Rostering
● Expanded aMath items for grades 9-12
● New Math Intervention Content
● Benchmarks and Norms
Introducing FASTtrack Reading – The recommended path to student results
FASTtrack provides a simple solution for quickly screening students across multiple disciplines, and providing resources for teachers based on student results. FASTtrack ensures you are always using the right combination of assessments with your students based on grade level and time of year. FASTtrack removes any guesswork by providing a one-button solution for teachers and students to start or continue testing. FASTtrack Reading is available as of July, 2019.
After completing FASTtrack, teachers get access to several valuable resources:
● A tailored instruction plan to address any class wide skill gaps
● Individual student risk levels across multiple skill areas
● Supplemental instruction plans for students who show risk in skill areas
● Recommended intervention tools and dosage
● Progress monitoring recommendations
Updated Teacher View:
FASTtrack assessments are visible to Teachers from the Screening page. The FASTtrack Reading page has been updated to make assessing students even easier.
● The Status column displays the current status of the FASTtrack assessments
o Not Started - None of the FASTtrack assessments have been started
o In Progress – At least one FASTtrack assessment has been started
o Completed – All FASTtrack assessments for that student are complete
● Any Teacher Administered assessments (for grades K-3) will be visible on the page
● Any Computer Administered assessments (for grades 2 and above) will be visible on the page
● The Start button will launch the single assessment, or set of assessments
Note: it is recommended that computer administered assessments are accessed via the student login
● The Resume button will continue an assessment that is in progress but has not been completed
● The assessment scores will display on the screening page once they have been completed
Note: In order for FASTtrack Reading to be available, the appropriate assessments must be enabled for your District
FASTtrack Reading - Assessments by Grade:
Grade/Interval | Computer Administered | Teacher Administered |
K-1st (Fall) | - | earlyReading |
1st (Winter, Spring) | - | earlyReading + CBMreading |
2-3 | aReading + AUTOreading | CBMreading |
4-12 | aReading + AUTOreading | - |
Improved Student Experience:
FASTtrack Reading assessments are also simple for students to launch. When students log into FastBridge, they will see a single FASTtrack button that will launch the correct assessments based on their grade and the time of year. The one-button solution on the student page will be available for FASTtrack Reading in July, with FASTtrack Math following in the 20-21 SY.
All other enabled assessments will continue to be available under the More Tests section.
The assessment icons have also been updated to a new student-friendly design.
An updated Screening to Intervention (s2i) report that matches the FASTtrack assessments will be added in early Fall, 2019. This includes:
● Phonemic Awareness : Ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds
● Phonics & Fluency: Accuracy and Automaticity with reading letters, words or connected text
● General Reading: Performance on an assessment predictive of overall reading proficiency
The s2i report also will provide new recommendations based on these skills, including a new and more granular way to map local, district-purchased instruction and intervention content. Please note that current instruction/intervention mappings in FastBridge will need to be reconfigured when the updated s2i report becomes available, to take advantage of this new and more granular flexibility. More information to come in late summer. And while FASTtrack Math is being developed as noted above, the current s2i Math report will be removed from Bridge until the entire FASTtrack Math / s2i Math is updated to match the new FASTtrack Reading / s2i Reading experience.
AUTOreading Updates
AUTOreading is now available for mainstream usage in FastBridge and is no longer in Lab status. This change will include a number of updates effective in the 2019 - 2020 school including a new composite score, updated reports, and updated benchmarks and norms.
New Composite Score:
Students will now receive an overall AUTOreading composite score when they complete the recommended subtests for their grade level. The composite score is calculated using the aReading scale, and will also use aReading benchmark and norm data.
As of July, the new AUTOreading composite will be available on the following reports:
● Group Screening – Teacher
● Group Screening - Leader
● Class List
● Student at a Glance
● Data Download
The AUTOreading composite score is calculated on the aReading scale, so the score will appear similar and be comparable to aReading. Further, the AUTOreading composite uses the aReading Benchmarks and Norms, which are available on the Training & Resources tab, Benchmarks & Norms page.
Data Download Updates for AUTOreading: In addition to AUTOreading having a new composite score, new columns were added to the Data Download file for AUTOreading. Below is a list of the new columns added:
● AUTOreading Graded Response Composite Auto Rescaled
● AUTOreading Percentile at School
● AUTOreading Percentile at LEA
● AUTOreading Percentile at Nation
● AUTOreading Risk Level
● AUTOreading Final Date
● Growth Score (from an interval to next interval )
● School Growth Percentile (from an interval to next interval)
● District Growth Percentile (from an interval to next interval )
● National Growth Percentile (from an interval to next interval )
● Growth Percentile by Start Score (from an interval to next interval)
● SubtestName Total Items
● SubtestName Items Correct
● SubtestName IC per minute
● SubtestName Graded Response Subtest Auto Theta
● SubtestName Graded Response Subtest Auto SEM
● SubtestName Graded Response Subtest Accuracy Theta
● SubtestName Graded Response Subtest Accuracy SEM
● SubtestName Graded Response Subtest Auto Rescaled
● SubtestName Graded Response Subtest Accuracy Rescaled
● SubtestName Error (Total Items - Items Correct)
● SubtestName Percentile at School
● SubtestName Percentile at LEA
● SubtestName Percentile at Nation
● SubtestName Risk Level
● SubtestName Final Date
● Growth Score (from an interval to next interval)
● School Growth Percentile (from an interval to next interval)
● District Growth Percentile (from an interval to next interval)
● National Growth Percentile (from an interval to next interval)
● Growth Percentile by Start Score (from an interval to next interval)
Updated Picture Naming subtest name to be Warm-Up. The column headers below were updated to refelct new name of subtest:
● Warm-Up Total Items
● Warm-Up Items Correct
● Warm-Up IC per minute
● Warm-Up Graded Response Subtest Auto Theta
● Warm-Up Graded Response Subtest Auto SEM
● Warm-Up Graded Response Subtest Auto Scaled
● Warm-Up Error (Total Items - Items Correct)
● Warm-Up Percentile at School
● Warm-Up Percentile at LEA
● Warm-Up Percentile at Nation
● Warm-Up Risk Level
● Warm-Up Final Date
Group Screening Report Updates
The Group Screening Report for Teachers was updated to better display results for assessments with subtests. The new default view provides a summary of the composite score by interval. A new dropdown is also available to view a summary of all subtests, or a specific subtest. This updated view is available for AUTOreading and Comprehension Efficiency:
The Group Screening Report for Leader roles (District Managers, School Managers, Specialists) now supports additional assessments as well and includes summary information at the top of the report for:
● AUTOreading
● Comprehension Efficiency
● mySAEBRS
● SAEBRS
Clever
We are excited to announce that Clever is now available to FastBridge customers for rostering and single sign-on. If you are interested in utilizing Clever for your district, contact FastBridge Support for additional information.
FastBridgeflix Our on-site and webinar learning opportunities are very popular, but we also hear that you’d like more opportunities to learn about using FastBridge and MTSS best practices. We don’t want schedules or budgets to keep anyone from making the most of FastBridge, so we are introducing FastBridgeflix: an on-demand learning subscription available directly within FastBridge. Available 24/7,FastBridgeflix includes recorded content plus activities for more than 40 of the most popular webinar topics.
New aMath Content
New items have been added to the aMath item bank that assess high-school math standards (Grades 9-12). In order to accommodate the new high school items, the aMath scale is being extended from the maximum score of 245 to a new maximum score of 275. This change enables aMath to accurately estimate general math performance across the full range of math ability Kindergarten through Grade 12.
The new content will be released in Lab status for the 2019-2020 academic year. This new content is available by enabling the aMath assessment for Grades 9-12.
New Intervention Content New intervention content is now available via the Training Center. As of July, 2019 new Math intervention modules are now available for Grades K - 5:
● Number Sense
● Whole Number Operations
Other Assessment Updates
FastBridge is changing its Fall screening recommendation for CBMmath assessments to be on-grade rather than previous grade. User feedback has mentioned a desire to screen students on current grade level standards and to use the Group Growth report with CBMmath, which requires on-grade Fall results to provide full functionality. So for the 2019-20 school year and moving forward, FastBridge will recommend screening on current grade level in Fall. The ability to choose prior grade level as desired still remains from the Screening page in FastBridge, however.
Graphical logos for FastBridge assessments are updated in this release. This update does not affect functionality for educators or for students.
Benchmarks & Norms
The national norms for the FastBridge assessments listed below were updated and will be available beginning in August of 2019. The update applies to both seasonal norms (fall, winter, and spring), and growth (fall-to-winter, fall-to-spring, and winter-to-spring). The update also affects default benchmarks because the benchmarks are tied directly to the national norms.
This update differs from prior updates in that FastBridge researchers employed special procedures to produce samples that have demographic characteristics matched to the overall U.S. student population by gender, race/ethnicity, and the percent of students receiving free or reduced lunch. The sampling procedures were repeated for each combination of assessment and grade separately. And, for each assessment, the norms are based on students from at least 20 states.
Demographically matched seasonal and growth norms have been updated for the following measures:
● earlyReading composite (and all measures required for the composite) K & 1
● earlyMath composite (and all measures required for the composite) K & 1
● aReading (K - 8)
● aMath (K-8)
● CBMreading (1 - 6)
● AUTOreading composite (K - 8)
The current national aggregate seasonal norms and growth norms for the following FastBridge assessments have also been updated. Like the demographically matched norms these norms use scores from across the entire FastBridge user-base. The difference is that the data were not constrained to conform to U.S. student demographic percentages. The demographics of the aggregate norm samples are similar to U.S. percentages, with modestly higher socio-economic status (estimated by percent on free or reduced lunch).
● CBMmath Automaticity (L1, L2, L3) grades 1 - 3
● CBMmath CAP (2 - 8)
● CBMreading (7 - 8)
Benefits
The new demographically matched national norms accurately represent the distribution of scores on FastBridge measures that would be attained in the full U.S. school population by grade. Thus, providing FastBridge customers
a way to accurately evaluate student, classroom, grade level, and school results relative to national expectations. The procedures employed also increase the accuracy of the national norms across the full range of abilities from the 1st through the 99th percentile. Because these norms are based on large samples using robust statistical procedures, they will likely remain the same for five years.
Comparison to Current National Norms
On average, the score associated with each benchmark (some risk and high risk) drops modestly. The decrease for the some-risk benchmark is small (e.g., 4 words per minute on CBMreading in Grade 2) and small to modest for the high-risk benchmark (e.g., 15 words per minute on CBMreading in Grade 2). What this means is that, on average, fewer students will be flagged as either high risk or some risk using national norms. The decline is due to the fact that prior national norms were based on samples with modestly higher SES levels (lower free-reduced lunch levels) than the U.S. school population.
Updated FastBridge System Requirements
The FastBridge System Requirements have been updated for the 2019-2020 academic year. The updated system requirements are below, and the most current requirements are always available from the diagnostics page: https://auth.fastbridge.org/diagnostics.do
Browser Support for Students
● Windows desktops and laptops
○ Chrome (version 72 and greater)
○ Internet Explorer (version 11)
○ Edge (version 41 and greater)
○ Firefox (version 66 and greater)
● Mac desktops and laptops
○ Safari (version 12 and greater)
○ Chrome (version 72 and greater)
● iOS mobile devices
○ Mobile Safari (version 11 and greater)
● Android mobile devices
○ Chrome (version 72 and greater)
● Chromebooks
○ Chrome (version 72 and greater)
Browser Support for Educators
● Windows desktops and laptops
○ Chrome (version 72 and greater)
○ Internet Explorer (version 11)
○ Edge (version 41 and greater)
○ Firefox (version 66 and greater)
● Mac desktops and laptops
○ Safari (version 12 and greater)
○ Chrome (version 72 and greater)
● iOS mobile devices
○ Mobile Safari (version 11 and greater; optimized for data collection purposes)
● Chromebooks
o Chrome (version 72 and greater)