In response to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2001 (No Child Left Behind), states have sought various ways to adequately assess students in order to in turn hold schools and districts accountable for closing the achievement gap. As the state of Texas, motivated by pressure from parents, teachers, and other vested interest groups who…

One aim of this article is to shift mindsets from the traditional identification of written language abilities that are "missing" in students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) to writing assessment as the discovery of more complex language strengths foundational to success across disciplines. The multiple language-levels (MLL)…

Standardized testing and accountability are currently unavoidable components of Texas Public Education. Through years of push-back, parents and educators have demanded that Texas consider alternative testing options that would reduce the high-stakes testing burden on students and schools. In 2015, the State of Texas passed legislation requiring…

We compared students' performance on a paper-based test (PBT) and three computer-based tests (CBTs). The three computer-based tests used different test navigation and answer selection features, allowing us to examine how these features affect student performance. The study sample consisted of 9,698 fourth through twelfth grade students from across…

In this study, we identified the code-related (decoding, fluency) and language comprehension (vocabulary, listening comprehension) demands of the CBM-Maze test, a formative assessment, and compared them to those of the Gates-MacGinitie test, a standardized summative assessment. The demands of these reading comprehension tests and their…

Interest in 21st century skills has brought concomitant interest in ways to teach and measure them. Games hold promise in these areas, but much of their potential has yet to be proven, and there are few examples of how to use the rich data from games to make inferences about players' knowledge, skills, and attributes. This article builds an…

To meet the constantly changing needs of schools and diverse learners, educators must frequently monitor student learning, revise curricula, and improve instruction. Consequently, it is critical that careful analyses of student performance data are ongoing components of curriculum decision-making processes. The primary purpose of this study is to…

Background: College- and career-ready standards cite the "special place of argument writing" in preparing students to be college students, professionals, and engaged citizens in an information-rich society (NGA, 2010). To support these critical skills, the National Writing Project (NWP) developed the College, Career, and Community…

High-quality measures of instructional practice are essential for research and evaluation of innovative instructional policies and programs. However, existing measures have generally proven inadequate because of cost and validity issues. This paper addresses two potential drawbacks of survey self-report measures: variation in teachers'…

In accordance with the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law of 2001, 100% of students were expected to become proficient on state assessments of reading and mathematics by the end of 2013-2014 academic year. Schools that consistently failed to meet the NCLB's Adequate Yearly Progress requirements were subject to penalties. In 2011, the U.S.…

Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) partnered with the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to conduct a multi-year study of Michigan's implementation of competency-based education in K-12 schools. This mixed-methods study seeks to investigate the implementation and effectiveness of CBE using data from surveys administered to 21j…

This guide was created as a resource to help families better understand "Measures of Academic Progress"® (MAP®), and their child's results. The guide provides answers to a variety of questions such as: "What is MAP?"; "What does MAP measure?"; "How do schools and teachers use MAP scores?"; "Can MAP tell…

High-quality measures of instructional practice are essential for research and evaluation of innovative instructional policies and programs, as well as for providing feedback to teachers and administrators. In this study, the authors examined whether using anchoring vignettes in web-based surveys improved the validity of teachers' self-assessments…

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on…

This mixed design study investigated the predictive and instructional uses of two different types of interim mathematics assessments given in two different districts. One district administered the same summative type of assessment three times a year, while the other district administered a different interim assessment after six-week intervals of…