An English Language Dictionary should be made available to students during summative testing in accordance with the Smarter Balanced Usability, Accessibility and Accommodations Guidelines (UAAG).
To facilitate this, Smarter Balanced has licensed dictionaries from Merriam-Webster for use in the Spring 2015 summative assessments. The license covers all Smarter Balanced states performing summative testing in 2015. These dictionaries are the same ones that were used in the Spring 2014 field test.
The following dictionaries should be used for the specified grades:
- Grades 3-5: Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary with Audio
- Grades 6-8: Merriam-Webster’s Intermediate Dictionary with Audio
- High School: Merriam-Webster’s School Dictionary with Audio
The audio portion of these dictionaries should be made available along with the textual portion.
Smarter balanced has also licensed the following thesauri:
- Merriam-Webster’s Intermediate Thesaurus
- Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Thesaurus
Please note that the Collegiate Thesaurus is written for a collegiate/adult audience. Merriam Webster released the intermediate thesaurus, geared towards younger students, on Tuesday, February 11, 2015.
The API for accessing the Merriam-Webster dictionaries is documented at http://www.dictionaryapi.com/products/index.htm. Registering on that site will allow you to obtain your own license keys free of charge for development purposes.
License keys for Smarter Balanced operational tests are posted on the Smarter Balanced Secure FTP site in the TestPackages folder.