3.1.16 John Wood Reading Stamina: What is it? Can I Plan for It? Sometimes, two unrelated experiences coalesce to stimulate thinking. This is what happened and what I have been thinking. Experience one: I had the opportunity to review secondary ELA units for... Read more
2.25.16 Rebecca Moore Empower Students with the College Explorer Tool It has been so exciting to get such great feedback from our partners after the “soft launch” of NWEA’s new College Explorer Tool! Since its recent release, well over 7500 people have visited... Read more
2.18.16 Michael Dahlin Measuring Growth and Understanding Negative Growth As a researcher at NWEA, I often answer questions about how to measure and interpret growth using the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) assessment. Measuring student growth with MAP is a lot... Read more
2.16.16 Zuly Naegele “One Day Soon” Reflections from a Doctoral Fellow Editor’s Note: Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) is a proud partner of the Multnomah County Partnership for Education Research (MCPER), established in 2013 with the University of... Read more
1.14.16 Nikkie Zanevsky The SLO mid-year checkpoint: 3 questions to help you determine if you’re on track The SLO mid-year checkpoint: 3 questions to help you determine if you’re on track In the fall, we shared our top three recommendations for developing Student Learning Objectives (SLOs),... Read more
11.17.15 John Wood Of NAEP and Norms: Why Do NWEA Norms Change? Before I address the question, indulge me while I set some context by discussing NAEP scores. As you know, 2015 NAEP scores showed a pretty broad-based decline breaking a trend of small increases... Read more
10.20.15 Nikkie Zanevsky Four Critical Questions to Help You Set Your Student Learning Objectives While the process of setting Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) varies across states, one thing is clear: developing high quality SLOs is no easy task. Among other challenges, districts need to make... Read more
10.15.15 Quinn Lathrop Measuring the Quality of Classification Decisions As a Research Scientist at NWEA, I do research on the statistical methods and techniques that are used in educational research. My background is very technical and most of my day is spent wrestling... Read more
9.17.15 Kathy Dyer Research Proof Points – Better Student Engagement Improves Student Learning We’ve posted research that has shown that using formative assessment can improve student learning. One of the ways that formative assessment does this is by improving student engagement, a... Read more
8.27.15 Andrew Hegedus Three Recommendations in Developing Student Learning Objectives With the increased emphasis now placed on the use of Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) in the evaluation of teacher performance, a question educators, administrators and policy makers are asking is:... Read more
7.2.15 Jim Soland Labeling Kids: Four Examples of Testing Practices that Inadvertently Impact How Students See Themselves It’s not just what we test, it’s how we talk about the results. Much attention is given to what we test and how we do it, especially with Common Core-aligned assessments on the horizon.... Read more
6.18.15 John Wood How Much Should We Grow? As NWEA prepares to release 2015 norms this summer, I am exploring the thoughtful use of norms in a series of four posts. The first post focused on understanding what norms are and how to judge the... Read more
