Most people want to close the door on 2020 as quickly as possible. This year was hard and sad for so many people. My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones and/or were victims of a collapsing economy. I also recognize just how hard everyone in education from the classroom to the statehouse—including and especially parents—had to work this year, something I witnessed up close as a school board member. It was like a game of three-dimensional chess being played on ball bearings.

This is the final post in a four-part series on social and emotional learning (SEL) assessment by Center associate Chris Brandt and guest author Katie Buckley, Managing Director of Research & Learning at Transforming Education. Across four posts, they make the argument that balanced systems of assessment must effectively support SEL and offer recommendations for how states, districts, and schools can and should support social and emotional learning in responsible and useful ways through assessment.

This is the third in a four-part series on social and emotional learning (SEL) assessment by Center associate Chris Brandt and guest author Katie Buckley, Managing Director of Research & Learning at Transforming Education. Across four posts, they make the argument that balanced systems of assessment must effectively support SEL and offer recommendations for how states, districts, and schools can and should support social and emotional learning in responsible and useful ways through assessment.

This is the second in a four-part series on social and emotional learning (SEL) assessment by Center associate Chris Brandt and guest author Katie Buckley, Managing Director of Research & Learning at Transforming Education. Across four posts, they make the argument that balanced systems of assessment must effectively support SEL and offer recommendations for how states, districts, and schools can and should support SEL in responsible and useful ways through assessment.

This is the first in a four-part series on social and emotional learning (SEL) assessment by Center associate Chris Brandt and guest author Katie Buckley, Managing Director of Research & Learning at Transforming Education. Across four posts they make the argument that balanced systems of assessment must effectively support SEL and offer recommendations for how states, districts, and schools can and should support SEL in responsible and useful ways through assessment.

This is the second in a series of three posts on planning for the examination of the validity of scores collected through remote test administration. In the first post, Michelle Boyer and Leslie Keng laid out the reasons why states should be concerned about the effect of remote testing on the comparability of score meaning. In the third post in this series, we will discuss specific challenges to score interpretations for remotely-administered tests.  

This is the first in a series of three posts on planning for the examination of the validity of scores collected through remote test administration. Next up is a discussion of a framework for the types of analyses that will be useful for understanding the degree to which scores are comparable between remotely tested students and students tested in the classroom, what might be done to adjust them if they are not, and the conditions under which data can be collected to support those analyses.

As the school year gets underway, one question on everyone’s mind is: What impact will all of the disruptions have on student learning? Answering this question requires collecting data on student experiences in addition to data on student achievement. 

Data on student experiences – data that really lets us dig into what students’ day to day school lives are like –  has largely been absent from statewide collection to date.   

What is fairness in educational testing? 

To some extent, trying to address the many challenges that the pandemic presents for K-12 education has been like steering a ship in a storm without the benefit of the ability to predict the storm’s duration or path with any confidence.