How a Shared Instructional Vision Can Strengthen Assessment System Coherence
A shared instructional vision can help districts build greater coherence across teaching, learning, instructional materials and assessment.
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Latest Posts
Why Do School Districts Protect the Test Pile?
Many districts conduct reviews to streamline their lineups of required assessments, but they resist eliminating tests. What’s behind that resistance?
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Making Validity Work in Practice
In educational assessment, we spend a lot of time talking about validity, but considerably less time figuring out how to make validation work in practice.
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Tilting at Windmills: Classroom Grading Practices That Won’t Go Away
Bad classroom grading practices persist, even though they’re based on technical quicksand. Here are four ways to improve them.
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How Reading Lists Can Improve Assessments
Required-reading lists can be controversial, but they can help level the playing field for large-scale reading tests by reducing the transfer demand on students.
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How Diploma Seals Can Help Assess Civic Learning
Civic seals can do more than recognize student learning. They can be part of a system that supports and gauges their civic readiness.
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Clarifying What Makes Assessment Instructionally Useful
The way we talk about an assessment’s instructional usefulness can undermine the clarity we need to use test information well.
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Leading Education Systems With Purpose in an Incoherent Environment
Education leaders are often asked to make coherent decisions in an incoherent environment. But decisions that fit together logically are important.
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Rethinking Career-Readiness Measures
RILS 2026 grapples with measuring students’ career-readiness. It’s especially important now, with AI, shifts in the economy, and persistent skills gaps.
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Learning About Reading Assessment
A retreat with experts taught me that our large-scale assessments don’t reflect the way children learn to read.
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What We’re Up To: Center Presentations at NCSA 2026
We’ve got a bunch of interesting presentations lined up for NCSA next week. Here’s a rundown of what we’re doing.
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When an Assessment Changes, Communication Planning Matters
When an assessment changes, it’s important to build understanding early. Constituencies need to know what changed, why, and what it means for them.
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Measuring Durable Competencies: Right-Sizing Expectations
Pressure to measure durable competencies is surging. But it’s challenging: there are limitations to what the data actually tell us.
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Supporting Systemic Changes in High School Math
Making deep changes in high school math assessment requires sustained support. These two new guides for state and district leaders can help.
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What We’re Up To: Center Presentations at NCME & AERA
Check out our lineup of fascinating presentations at two of the assessment field’s big conferences, NCME and AERA.
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Civic Learning Matters. Assessment Systems Should Measure It
Schools should prepare graduates for economic opportunity and democratic participation, but our assessment systems don’t gauge how well they’re doing.
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Measuring Durable Skills: Why States Need More Than a Test
A large-scale test isn’t enough to measure durable skills. A broader view of assessment opens up a nuanced, more promising landscape.
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Assessing Civic Learning
The editors of a new book discuss how assessment can support civics learning and students’ engagement in civics.
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