This study uses reading test scores from over 728,923 3rd–8th-grade students in 2,056 schools across the US to compare threshold-setting methods to detect noneffortful item responses. and so helps provide guidance on the tradeoffs involved in using a given method to identify noneffortful responses.

This study identifies students’ academic trajectories in the middle grades relative to a set of college readiness benchmarks. We apply math and reading college readiness benchmarks to rich longitudinal data for more than 360,000 students across the nation. Student-level and school-level demographic characteristics significantly predict academic trajectories.

Among the many ways in which schools are being transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the change in kindergarten enrollment is likely to have important consequences in classrooms across the nation. Because the academic and nonacademic skills students develop in their preschool and early elementary school years are foundational to important longer-term outcomes, understanding these changes and finding ways to effectively support our youngest students’ learning is critical for educators and leaders. Drawing on recent research, we offer four timely considerations for district, school, and classroom leaders.

This report presents the results of a mode comparability study conducted through simulations to evaluate how scores from MAP Growth administered on the constraint-based engine (CBE) compare to those administered on the current MAP Growth engine known as COLO.

This technical report documents the processes and procedures employed by NWEA to build and support the Spanish MAP Growth Reading assessment.

Important educational policy decisions, like whether to shorten or extend the school year, often assume that growth in achievement is linear through the school year.  This research examines this untested assumption using data from seven million students in kindergarten through 8th grade across the fall, winter, and spring of the 2016-17 school year.

In this CPRE Knowledge Hub Research Minutes podcast, Megan Kuhfeld discusses what NWEA research using fall 2020 test scores of more than four million students shows about the academic achievement and growth of US students, and some of the many questions that remain.