The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) addresses concerns about the effects of high-stakes achievement tests by authorizing a pilot program that allows up to seven states to apply for a waiver from fed…
Archives: Informing Current and Future Initiatives
Our resources address key issues in our field to help assessment and accountability leaders, policy makers, and practitioners design and implement systems that promote improved outcomes for students.
We proudly generate white papers, policy briefs, videos, toolkits, and other products to support you and your organization in navigating the most important issues facing our field. We focus on the design and validation of assessment and accountability systems to support next generation learning initiatives. Our resources are freely available via Creative Commons 4.0 license, which allows users to use, adapt, and/or share the material as needed with proper attribution.
Senior Associate, William Lorié, analyzes the policy challenges and provides recommendations associated with having college admissions tests meet federal assessment requirements under ESSA.
Part 1: Challenges From Session 6 of RILS 2021: The Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority under the Every Student Succeeds Act was purportedly created to provide space for states to design and…
From Session 4 of the 2021 Convening: The final session will involve turning the tables.
The Operational Best Practices for Accountability are intended to provide states with guidance and criteria for the design, development, implementation, evaluation, and potential revision of accountab…
The Operational Best Practices for Accountability are intended to provide states with guidance and criteria for the design, development, implementation, evaluation, and potential revision of accountab…
This paper supported by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) provides guidance to help states develop and validate exit criteria for schools classified as Comprehensive Supports and Impr…
Scott Marion argues on behalf of several states for a principled approach for using an equity in their ESSA accountability system designs.
Scott Marion provides a rationale for states interested in using an achievement index in their ESSA accountability system designs.
Susan Lyons, Juan D’Brot, and Erika Landl developed the following resource to provide state accountability leaders an overview of the federal law and key design considerations as they develop id…
Juan D’Brot, Susan Lyons, and Erika Landl developed the following resource to help state accountability leaders consider criteria and potential methods to evaluate the success, utility, and impa…
This brief provides recommendations to support state education agencies establish coherent state plans for ESSA and Perkins.
This brief summarizes the requirements defined within ESSA for the school quality/student success indicator and outlines key factors to consider when identifying, evaluating, and implementing these in…
This paper examines the conceptual and practical challenges in developing a system of interim assessments that produces a single summative score for accountability purposes, in line with that detailed…
This paper was submitted to the United States Department of Education (ED) in September 2016 as comments on the proposed ESSA federal regulations (§200.
This white paper provides an overview of key considerations associated with including indicators of progress in English language proficiency within ESSA systems of accountability.
In this paper, Scott Marion and Susan Lyons describe the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act regarding the indicator for student success and school quality—often called the 5th indicator…
Associate Director Chris Domaleski, along with Senior Associate Brian Gong and colleagues at the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) wrote a paper to help states wrestle with the challenge…