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| Company Summary |
SME conducts development, analysis, and scoring of high-stakes assessments for urban districts, state testing programs, and other assessment companies. For example, SME has developed assessments for the school districts in Cleveland, Ohio, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Oakland, California. They have provided both development and analysis for the English Language Proficiency Assessment (MI ELPA) in the state of Michigan and scoring services for assessments in Indiana and New Jersey. |
| SME Services |
In 2010, ISST partnered with Strategic Measurement and Evaluation, Inc.’s (SME) to conduct the distribution and scoring of the Islamic Studies Standardized Tests. SME provides services to large school districts, state education agencies, and private corporations across the United States in areas of: |
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SME focuses on: |
√ Improving quality of assessment material
√ Advancing reliability and validity of assessment scoring
√ Promoting effective use of assessment data
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With over 50 years of combined experience of the senior management staff, SME is able to design and deliver customized assessment and scoring solutions that add value to the assessment process. SME is a full-service assessment company that provides superior service and on-time delivery of high quality products to their clients. We are directly involved in the |
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Reporting |
Analysis |
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of assessment material. For example, SME developed benchmark reading and mathematics assessments for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. |
SME provides a full range of sophisticated psychometric support services for both district and state clientele. We develop assessments to meet professional assessment standards for validity, reliability, and fairness. SME’s ability to apply state-of-the-art equating and scaling solutions to local assessment data enhances the value of these assessments by increasing program flexibility and allowing districts to monitor student progress in new ways. Our team works closely with clients to develop customized assessment solutions that meet local needs. In doing this work, SME seeks to highlight the connections between assessment and instruction and the role assessment data can play in improving student achievement. SME designed and executed a scoring system that covered all aspects of the scoring process, from the collection and inventory of completed test materials to the delivery of a final data file containing scored student data. |
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| SME Operations |
SME maintains offices in Champaign, Illinois and Lafayette, Indiana, two university communities with a highly educated work force. These offices house SME’s full-time staff and each site includes a performance assessment scoring center. |
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Across the two facilities, the scoring centers have approximately 150 web-enabled scoring workstations. In the fall of 2009, SME added a mobile scoring center with 100 laptops, transportable server stations, and related project equipment. SME is able to use this mobile scoring center to provide extra capacity for existing projects or as a stand-alone scoring center for specific projects. For example, for the past two years,SME has set-up the mobile scoring center in New York to provide scoring capacity for the New York City Charter Schools’ scoring project. |
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In 2011, SME’s scoring centers trained hundreds of scorers and scored close to 2.3 million constructed-response items. All projects were completed accurately and on schedule. |
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About Dr. Denis Jarvinen: |
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Dr. Denis Jarvinen is the founder and president of Strategic Measurement and Evaluation (SME). He has earned his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology specializing in Measurement and Evaluation. Dr. Jarvinen is an award winning educator with over twenty years of practicalexperience managing the development of assessment material and analyzing data. Dr. Jarvinen is a recognized authority on facilitating test development and utilizing expert statistical analysis of data. At SME Dr. Jarvinen is responsible for the design and management of all assessment and evaluation contracts and serves as the company’s primary psychometrician.
About Mona Stivers:
Ms. Stivers is the Senior Program Manager at Strategic Measurement and Evaluation. Ms. Stivers is a seasoned and highly-skilled professional with expertise in driving projects globally and consistently meeting key program deliverables. She has led the teams responsible for providing hands-on, highly professional and immediate customer service for dozens of large-scale projects, including those across New York, Ohio, and New Jersey. As such, she is sensitive to the needs and resources of individual schools. She has extensive experience is assembling talented, self-directed teams, and is passionately committed to sustaining robust, streamlined systems that respond to specific program objectives. Her degree in Organizational Management and background in project supervision, presentations, and team participation offer additional depth to any project.
SME Team
Dr. Denis Jarvinen and Mona Stivers and the team at SME have been immensely helpful to fulfilling the ISST vision of developing a professional and quality national assessment for Islamic studies subjects. The team at SME has carried this vision from ground up assisting in every step of the test making process. Members of SME are responsible for materials orders and processing, scoring and reporting, and training and analysis. |
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| Click to view list of SME Clients. |
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