Writing from source text is critical for developing college-and-career readiness because it is required in advanced academic environments and many vocations. Scenario-based assessment (SBA) represents one approach to measuring this ability. In such assessment, the scenario presents an issue that the student is to read and write about. Before…

This paper reports the results of a descriptive study on the use of a technology-enhanced formative assessment system called Accelerated Math (AM) for ELLs and their native-English-speaking (NES) peers. It was comprised of analyses of an extant database of 18,549 students, including 2,057 ELLs, from grades 1 through 8 across 30 U.S. states. These…

A wind energy focused curriculum for grades 4-8 was designed and implemented to promote the understanding of wind energy concepts with American Indian students. 57 students who participated in the 2009 summer program of the "Reach for the Sky" (RFTS) Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) received the curriculum. The…

This year the Center on Education Policy analyzed data on the achievement of different groups of students in two distinct ways. First, it looked at grade 4 test results to determine whether the performance of various groups improved at three achievement levels--basic and above, proficient and above, and advanced. Second, it looked at gaps between…

This booklet contains the 14 exercises that are used in the Bloomington, Minnesota, school system's writing assessment program. Depending on their applicability, the exercises may be used to assess the writing performance of fourth-, eighth-, or eleventh-grade students. Thirteen of the exercises are from the National Assessment of Educational…

This summary of the Bloomington, Minnesota, public schools writing assessment program includes background information about the selection of exercises that assessed fourth-, eighth-, and eleventh-grade students' writing abilities, a list of these exercises that were used, and information about the students who were assessed. The results of the…

Recently the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) completed a project to connect the scale of the MCA and BST with NWEA's RIT scale. Six Minnesota systems participated in the study, using test information from a group of over 13,000 students enrolled in third, fifth, and eighth grades who took these Minnesota Assessments and NWEA tests in the…