South Carolina College and Career READY Assessments (SC READY)
Overview of SC READY The South Carolina College- and Career- READY Assessments (SC READY) are statewide assessments in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics that will meet all of the requirements of Acts 155 and 200, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) , the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA), and the Assessments Peer Review guidance.
All students in grades 3–8 are required to take the SC READY except those who qualify for the South Carolina National Center and State Collaborative (SC-NCSC).
The SC READY test items are aligned to the standards for each subject and grade level. Standards outline what schools are expected to teach and what students are expected to learn. Academic standards also include indicators that are statements of the specific cognitive processes and the content knowledge and skills that students must demonstrate to meet the grade-level standards. SC READY test items are written to assess the content knowledge and skills described in the academic standards and indicators.
The writing prompt will be a “text-dependent analysis” (or TDA) item. This type of item requires that students read a piece of text or passage and draw upon that text for their written responses—e.g., support their responses with evidence from the text. The TDA item type is very different from the stand-alone writing prompts that were used in the past for SCPASS and that appeared on the ACT Aspire tests. The type of text that the students read and respond to for the TDA item may be drawn from different genres or modes, but the type of writing that the students produce is not mode-specific per se.
Students who are taking the SC READY ELA test online will key/type their responses to the TDA item in the online testing system. However, students will have access to scratch paper on which to write a rough draft of their response. The rough drafts would be considered secure material; details regarding how to deal with these materials will be included in the SC READY TAM.
Students are not allowed to use dictionaries or thesauruses during either session of the ELA test. The only exceptions to this policy are for students with disabilities who may use a poor speller’s dictionary as an accommodation for the TDA item only and English Language Learners (ELLs) who may use a word-to-word dictionary as an accommodation during all SC READY assessments.
For the TDA item, students will have access to a writer’s checklist to help them plan, write, and proofread their responses. Links to the checklists for grade 3 and for grades 4–8 appear below. The TDA items for all grades will be scored with a holistic rubric.
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