8.5.13 Elaine Vislocky Classroom Environment, Positive Stress, and Formative Assessment – A Winning Combination Nicholas Clement recently posted a guest blog at the Arizona Daily Star titled Here’s what your kids want in their perfect teacher, classroom, and it got me thinking. Yes, it is nearing that time... Read more
7.19.13 Dr. Anne Udall Assessment Literacy – New Site Launches to Help Educators Get the Most from Assessment While all educators do not agree on how to define assessment, what it should look like, or who should control it, educators are beginning to agree that assessment literacy—or the knowledge of the... Read more
7.17.13 Andrew Hegedus Multiple choice assessments are good enough for nuclear power, why not education? As the concluding post to a four-part series on how assessments can be well-aligned to state or common core standards, I am introducing a new phrase into the education ecosystem – a reasonable... Read more
7.15.13 Kathy Dyer Digital Technology Tools for Implementing Formative Assessment – Post One We’ve blogged numerously on classroom formative assessment strategies that can be implemented easily into everyday classroom activities. All of the formative assessment blogs we’ve done to date... Read more
7.8.13 Kathy Dyer Formative Assessment and Student Self-Regulation: Making Great Teachers Great If you ask a student what makes a great teacher great, you’ll likely get quite a variety of answers: passion for their subject, compassion for their students, devotion to comprehension and likely... Read more
6.20.13 NWEA K-12 Assessments and Teacher Evaluation: Using Data to Help Teachers Strengthen Their Practice In a three-part guest series at Getting Smart, NWEA leaders consider the impact of using data from tests designed for instructional purposes to guide educator evaluations and call for a renewed focus... Read more
6.12.13 Dr. Anne Udall New Literacy for Teachers, Student Data, and Educator Evaluation NWEA authors have been featured recently on leading educational blogs and we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss their insights! Below we provide a brief highlight of the topics they touch on and... Read more
6.12.13 Andrew Hegedus Creating High-Quality Test Items Welcome to the third post in a series of entries about how MAP assessments are aligned to content standards. Previous posts in the series discussed how we ensure test items align to... Read more
5.29.13 Andrew Hegedus MAP Test Design as Informed by NWEA Guiding Principles This is the second post in a series of blogs about how MAP assessments are aligned to content standards. This post was authored by NWEA content specialists Eric Dombrowik, Alane Ferland, and Roy... Read more
5.14.13 Michael Dahlin Using NWEA Norms to Establish Goals on State Tests Question: How do we use NWEA norms to identify student performance and growth goals around meeting state proficiency standards? Answer: Simply put, we can’t. NWEA performance and growth norms... Read more
4.22.13 Andrew Hegedus Aligning the MAP Assessment to Content Standards As assessment data is increasingly used in high stakes evaluations, a major area of discussion is the alignment between the assessment and the responsibility to teach content in accordance with the... Read more
4.9.13 Nate Jensen The Differences Between the Student and School Norms As we approach the end of the school year, I’ve started to receive an increasing number of questions from partner schools and districts about how to interpret the growth of students. More... Read more