We Make Assessment Literacy Too Hard!
Insights from behavioral economics can help us do right by teachers and stop blaming them for struggling to understand assessment data.
Read MoreCategory: Professional Learning
How States Can Avoid “Cruel Optimism” in Teacher Professional Learning
States have a crucial role to play in supporting high-quality teacher learning. These three steps can help them avoid “cruel optimism.”
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Instructing & Assessing 21st Century Skills: A Focus on Analytical Thinking
Guidance on defining and assessing analytical thinking, a skill that’s increasingly important to students’ future success.
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Instructionally Useful Assessments: Don’t Tell Us—Show Us
Education leaders and vendors claim that many assessments are “instructionally useful.” Such claims must be highly specific, and supported by evidence.
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Assessment Data Masquerading as Instructionally Useful Information
Which kinds of tests provide information that helps teachers adjust their instruction? We outline 10 key features of instructionally useful assessments
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Stop Trying to Use Commercial Interim Tests for Instructional Purposes
The concept of “strategic abandonment” sheds light on the appropriate uses of commercial interim assessments. Instructional utility isn’t one of them.
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Innovative Assessments: A Plea for Clarity and Humility
Before launching a project to build an “innovative” assessment for education, it’s wise to define what you want to move toward—and away from.
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Ethical Thinking as a 21st Century Skill
Like other 21st century skills, ethical thinking presents substantial challenges to educators who want to define, teach, and assess it.
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Assessing Students’ Creative Thinking
Guidance on defining and assessing creative thinking, a skill that’s increasingly in demand among employers.
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A Flawed Approach to Supporting Teacher Learning: ‘Cruel Optimism’
In this TikTok era, we break teachers’ learning into bite-sized pieces and expect them to learn on their own. But we accept this model at our peril.
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Building Professional Learning Communities
How my bicycle paceline taught me the seven things teachers need most in their professional learning communities.
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How to Choose Local Assessments
Choosing local assessments can be tricky. A new guide walks district leaders through the questions they should ask and the evidence they should request.
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What’s in a Name? The Challenge of Testing Terminology
We use a lot of assessment names—formative, interim, benchmark—without agreeing on their meaning and use. The cost? Public understanding and student learning.
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Diagnostic Measurement for K-12 Education
André Rupp provides answers to frequently asked questions about four aspects of diagnostic classification models in K-12 education.
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Understanding Root Causes of Misalignment Between Results from Different Assessments
Policymakers and educators should have guidance to make sense of why different assessments can yield such different results.
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Reorienting Conversations about Assessment Literacy Through a Digital Lens
Discussing how digital tools, when implemented correctly, can help educators and school officials make informed decisions about how to support student learning.
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Supporting the Implementation of Formative Assessment
Formative assessment implementation can be both impeded and facilitated, and we take a look at the factors that play into each outcome.
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A Guiding Framework to Improve Classroom Assessment Practices
A blog post from one of our interns presents a framework for improving classroom assessment practices.
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