Guidelines When Considering Tier Assignments and/or Meeting Exit Criteria

The maximum ceiling (or cap) on the listening and reading sections for Tier A is a 4.0. The writing and speaking sections are not capped. The reason for the cap is that ELLs taking Tier A are not exposed to a significant number of level 4 and 5 questions based on the higher model performance indicators. Giving a student a lower than appropriate Tier means you are not giving him/her an opportunity to demonstrate that they CAN achieve higher levels. Tier A should only be used for students who will likely score between 1 - 2.5.

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