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The New York State BOCES system is a collection of public organizations that were created by the New York State Legislature in 1948 to provide shared educational programs and services to school districts.
At Oneida-Herkimer-Madison BOCES, we strive to provide innovative leadership, programs, and services in response to the emerging educational needs of our school districts. In the field of World Languages, our BOCES has brought together teachers from our region for over twenty years to articulate needs within the field of World Languages and to collaboratively share best practices with each other via regional World Language Network meetings.
Our experience with Checkpoint Examinations in various World Languages stems from our Interactive Video Courses (IVC) program. Because of this program, nearly 100 classes per day are taught to students in classrooms around New York State, most of them being either American Sign Language (ASL) or Mandarin Chinese. As the State Education Department never produced Regents examinations for either of these languages, we were tasked with developing procedures and systems within our organization to produce our own Checkpoint examinations in these languages. Later, when funding for Regents examinations in all World Languages was cut at the State level, schools across New York State were encouraged to work collaboratively with their BOCES to develop regional Checkpoint Examinations. Our prior experience with examination development in American Sign Language and Manadrin Chinese was applied to other languages taught in our region, including French, Italian, and Spanish.
All of our item writers are current or former teachers of a World Language in New York State. All item writers receive professional development on a yearly basis to a) remind them of our procedures and expectations and b) to further refine their own abilities to write appropriate and high quality questions.
All examination items are submitted to our team of exam leaders, all of whom are retired teachers who possess significant experience providing instruction in a World Language, are well-respected by teachers in the field and are deemed highly-qualified for their positions developing Checkpoint Examinations. The exam leaders review and adapt the submitted items (as needed), build and maintain banks of items for each part of the examination, and compose fair and balanced Checkpoint Examinations that are aligned with the New York State World Languages topics and State standards. Over the years, many of our exam leaders have earned recognition for their achievements in World Languages realm of education, including roles as item writers for the former Proficiency and Regents Examinations in LOTE, College Board consultant, Advanced Placement question and table leader, adjunct college professors, department chairpersons, item writers and scorers for Pearson© testing services, members and leaders of NYSAFLT, members of ACTFL, and presenters at the ACTFL national conference.
Updated 1/09/2023
