6.30.16 Summer School – School and District Leaders’ To-Do List for Formative Assessment Success With summer fast approaching teachers often have a laundry list of to-do’s, books to read, traveling to catch up on, and other tasks that typically get shelved during the busy school year. This is... Read more
6.16.16 How many students and schools actually make a year and a half of growth during a year? If all students are going to be college and career ready, many have a lot of catching up to do. And one question NWEA researchers are frequently asked is “What is a reasonable growth target... Read more
6.3.16 Five Ways to Promote Summer Lovin’…of Math! June: time to hang on by our fingernails, but also time to set families up for summer learning success. Families all hear us saying that reading logs and library cards are keys to summer reading... Read more
5.31.16 Six Steps to Formative Assessment Success in the Classroom In a post not too long ago, I highlighted three reasons to prioritize formative assessment in the classroom. Formative assessment may be a buzz word in education these days, but it’s more than... Read more
5.10.16 What does equity and accessibility look like within assessment? So what do a pair of exercise balls, an old lectern, and tiny kindergarten-size chairs have to do with second grade education? For me they turned out to be the keys I needed to create an accessible... Read more
5.5.16 Make Assessment Work for All Students: Multiple Measures Matter – A New Report from NWEA and Gallup NWEA is pleased to present the third installment in our ongoing investigation into public perceptions of K12 assessment, Make Assessment Work for All Students: Multiple Measures Matter. The study... Read more
4.19.16 Do you know what your child is learning in school? – 3 Questions for the Car How can we take what happens naturally at home and connect it explicitly to what is happening in classrooms where formative assessment is well integrated? Or as Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn... Read more
4.14.16 The Importance of Data Comparability in Today’s Assessment Environment Interim assessments offer many advantages, including the ability to gather and compare data that’s collected over time—both within a single year and over the course of multiple years. An... Read more
4.7.16 Three Reasons to Prioritize Formative Assessment in the Classroom Formative assessment focuses on two main things: teachers and students gathering accurate information in the moment, and teachers using that information to quickly adapt instruction. Ongoing... Read more
3.22.16 10 Ingredients for Engaging Classroom Discussions What do you get when you mix the 7 Norms of Collaboration (Garmston and Wellman 2009), Evocative Coaching (Tschannen-Moran and Tschannen-Moran 2010), Adaptive Schools (Garmston and Wellman 2009),... Read more
3.15.16 10 Ways Leaders can Support Teachers Use of Formative Assessment (part 1) If formative assessment has so much potential, why aren’t school leaders making it happen? In a blog post, Justin Baeder posed this question, which I use often in working with school and district... Read more
3.8.16 Formative Assessment: It’s Not Just Another Thing to Do As the weather gets warmer, the green bits of grass begin to peek out from the white snow, and we begin to see changes all around us. As educators, we are very familiar with change. We are regularly... Read more