7 tried-and-true ways
to help teachers flourish
with the high stakes of testing
It’s no secret that when it comes to testing, there is a tremendous amount of pressure put on teachers. Assessments can be an invaluable tool for helping them gauge their students’ learning and make the most out of precious classroom time—but they can feel like a tremendous burden, too. Goals like proficiency can add to teachers’ already immense cognitive load, and pressure around assessments can even interfere with teachers’ self-worth when they see test results as a reflection of their job performance.
So how can leaders transform their school culture to support teachers, leverage assessments as a supporting tool, and relieve some of that pressure?
View briefTopics: Leadership
Products: MAP Growth
Related Topics
Video
MAP Growth & Houston ISD: Accelerating Confidence and Success
Shundra Brown is Executive Director of Instruction in Houston ISD, supervising principals across eight campuses. In this interview, she shares how she drives instructional improvement with MAP Growth. She also explains how MAP Growth provides longitudinal growth metrics beyond unit tests and proficiency, enabling skill-level diagnosis, individualized intervention and acceleration, and year-over-year campus comparisons and analyses. The interview covers key reports, including the Achievement Summary Growth (ASG) report and STAAR Projected Proficiency report. MAP is embedded districtwide in Houston, powering student goal-setting conferences, growth celebrations to build confidence (especially below grade level), multilingual learner support and better communication of results to the school board.
Topics: Assessment, Insights & reports, Instructional strategies, Leadership, Multilingual learners, School improvement
Products: MAP Growth
Guide
Have you ever left a school board meeting wishing you and your presentation had been more successful? Many other administrators will tell you that you are most assuredly not alone! Here are proven strategies that can help you avoid common missteps, build trust, and align your presentation with the needs of your school board.
Topics: Assessment, Insights & reports, Leadership, School improvement
Products: MAP Growth
Article
Data detectives: The case of the test-time tradeoff
Explore how one teacher uncovered the real reason behind a student’s stagnant scores—and why digging deeper into MAP Growth data can reveal more than meets the eye.
Topics: Assessment, Insights & reports, Leadership
Products: MAP Growth
Video
The Transformative 10 in action: A conversation between school leaders
Brian Amsler is the principal at Lincoln Middle School in Schiller Park School District in Illinois, where the NWEA Research Team first identified how these strategies work in concert to bring about growth. In this conversation, Brian speaks with Dr. David Collum, Data & Assessment Coordinator at Confluence Academies in St. Louis, MO about his efforts to put the Transformative Ten in action and the challenges to creating a high growth mindset.
Topics: Assessment, Education research, Instructional strategies, Leadership
Products: MAP Growth
eBook
Support all students with MTSS
MTSS is a framework for helping educators meet the diverse needs of learners. It relies heavily on assessment, a critical piece in the puzzle of understanding where kids are in their learning. In this collection of posts from our blog, Teach. Learn. Grow., you can learn more about how to use MTSS effectively in your school or district.
Topics: Accessibility, Assessment, Equity, Leadership
Guide
6 proven ways to build a culture that leaves a legacy
Discover six strategies to help district leaders and educators build a culture that endures. You’ll learn about expanding leadership, championing goal-setting, leveraging AI, and more, alongside examples from districts that used each strategy and saw results.
Topics: Assessment, Insights & reports, Leadership, School improvement
Products: MAP Growth
Webinar
Building a data playbook: Action plans and protocols that drive growth
How do high-performing districts turn assessment data into measurable student growth? Watch this webinar to learn how West Feliciana Parish Schools used MAP® Growth™ data to build a proactive strategy that earned them the title of Louisiana’s top-ranked district.
Topics: Assessment, Insights & reports, Leadership
Products: MAP Growth