We’re committed to helping states and school districts design and implement assessment and accountability systems that support meaningful educational outcomes and student achievement.
We help states and school districts design assessments and assessment systems that meet technical and policy goals to support student learning and for other critical uses.
We’re a leader in designing and implementing accountability systems for states and school districts to meet key federal and state requirements that also support continuous improvement efforts.
State and district leaders are facing multiple concerns in response to widespread and potential long-term school closures due to the growing threat of COVID-19. The concerns are broad and consequential. We launched this page to help you efficiently find the resources you need during these uncertain times.
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.
This is the fourth in a series of posts by our 2020 summer interns and their mentors based on their project and the assessment and accountability issues they addressed this summer. Maura O’Riordan, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, worked with Chris Domaleski to develop guidance to help states better understand the impact of assessment accommodations on the meaning and interpretation of test scores.
This is the third in a series of posts by our 2020 summer interns and their mentors based on their project and the assessment and accountability issues they addressed this summer. Alexandra Stone, from the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, worked with Carla Evans on analyses to evaluate the effects on student achievement in the NH PACE program.
Those responsible for summative classroom assessment in 2020-2021 face a number of daunting challenges, not the least of which is that the definition of “classroom” is wide and varied.
As school restarts this fall, many teachers and students are facing different learning environments than the typical back-to-school realities – including when it comes to formative classroom assessment.
COVID has reshaped teaching and learning in ways that could make a teacher or other educational leader wonder—what’s the same and what’s different about classroom assessment in a remote or hybrid learning environment?
When Mary Ann Snider and I wrote in late April, “We can seize this opportunity to create assessment experiences that require students to think deeply and to demonstrate that deep thinking,” we were not thinking that students would be engaged in remote learning again this school year.
This is the second in a series of posts by our 2020 summer interns and their mentors based on their project and the assessment and accountability issues they addressed this summer. Sandy Student, from the University of Colorado Boulder, and Brian Gong get things started with a two-part series describing their work analyzing the validity arguments for states’ large-scale Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) assessments.
Many changes are being considered for schools in 2020-2021 and beyond in the era of COVID-19 and disruptions to schooling. Some of these include later school-year starts, blended instructional models for all students, full-on virtual delivery of content, and an extended school year to account for lost instructional time. Add to this the very real social and emotional needs of both students and adults and we need to be holistically considering school restart.
Once again this year, we are pleased to share posts on CenterLine by our summer interns and their mentors. These posts are based on the project they undertook and the assessment and accountability issues they addressed this summer.
Various states have advanced through-course proposals, in which states administer tests throughout the year rather than only once at the end. Some of these proposals come through the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA). Others are externally funded initiatives or proposed as a one-time spring 2021 replacement for traditional end-of-year state tests.
“…a collection of assessments does not entail a system any more than a pile of bricks entails a house.” Coladarci (2002)
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and yet expecting different results. Recently, I have been thinking about how this adage applies to innovative state assessment systems—those systems states are developing that offer new ways of measuring student proficiency for use in state accountability systems. I have concluded that one of the reasons that successful innovation in state assessment systems has been so rare is that we continue to ask states to implement innovative assessment systems before the state or the system is ready.
