The "5Essentials Survey" is one of the few validated instruments to measure school climate. Schools that are strong in at least three of the five essential supports are up to 10 times more likely to experience substantial gains in students' math and reading scores. More than 6,000 schools nationwide have administered the…

The 2015 reauthorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) placed a state-level 1.0% threshold on student participation in the alternate assessment based on alternate academic achievement standard (AA-AAAS). ESSA also stipulated that state education agencies (SEAs) may not impose on any local educational agency (LEA) a cap on the percentage…

This "Guide" is an update to the State Guide to Universally Designed Assessments produced by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) in 2006 (Johnstone et al.). It provides a brief overview of what a universally designed assessment is, followed by a set of steps for states to consider when designing and developing, or…

This article describes two assessment tools that have been used to assess the reading skills of youth participating in alternative basic skills and livelihood skills training programs. The Rapid Assessment of Reading Skills (RARS) was developed to identify potential participants who needed to improve their reading skills before beginning training…

To assess education progress in the early grades and identify achievement gaps, this study examined reading achievement data for kindergarten and grade 1 students in two districts in Illinois: District U-46 (Elgin Area Schools) and District 186 (Springfield Public Schools). Drawing on a different reading assessment in each district, the study team…

Although there are many methods available for assessing text comprehension, the cloze test is not widely acknowledged as one of them. Critiques on cloze testing center on its supposedly limited ability to measure comprehension beyond the sentence. However, these critiques do not hold for all types of cloze tests; the particular configuration of a…

A few years ago, Marnie O. Malone and her team at Elmira City Schools found themselves facing a challenge that's all too common: How can we best support students who we know aren't likely to meet grade-level standards? To find an answer, they looked to the MAP® Suite of assessments from NWEA®. This brief case study describes how Malone and her…

A firm foundation in alphabet knowledge is critical for children learning to read. Under new literacy standards, letter name knowledge in preschool and kindergarten can function as a gatekeeper to the rest of the curriculum. Teachers need data about their students' alphabet knowledge early and often to plan differentiated instruction that moves…

Preschool and kindergarten teachers can assess and monitor their students' letter name knowledge in less than a minute per student using the freely available Quick Letter Name Knowledge assessment. The purpose of this article is to introduce the Quick Letter Name Knowledge assessment to early childhood educational practitioners. [This article was…

This paper describes the origins of the widely used curriculum--based measure of oral reading fluency (ORF) and how the creation and use of ORF norms has evolved over time. Norms for ORF can be used to help educators make decisions about which students might need intervention in reading and to help monitor students' progress once instruction has…

The construct of reading comprehension has changed significantly in the twenty-first century; however, some test designs have not evolved sufficiently to capture these changes. Specifically, the nature of literacy sources and skills required has changed (wrought primarily by widespread use of digital technologies). Modern theories of comprehension…

The author, a professor of English education, reads to his nine-year-old son nightly, and has for many years. The mutually cherished and fulfilling routine is strained to the breaking point because of the author's growing concern about his son's prospects for being admitted into a "good" public middle school. The narrative offers…

Every summer, the news is filled with stories about summer learning loss. The warnings sound dire: two months of math learning lost for most students every summer, and two to three months of reading learning lost for low-income students, according to the National Summer Learning Association. By the ninth grade, "summer learning loss during…

Over the past several years, content experts, psychometricians, and researchers have been hard at work developing, refining, and studying the digital SAT. The work is grounded in foundational best practices and advances in measurement and assessment design, with fairness for students informing all of the work done. This paper shares learnings from…

The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has synthesized key data on English learners (ELs) into two-page sheets on a variety of subjects. This fact sheet provides the following data on ELs in the United States over the 2017-2018 school year: (1) Percentage of Students Enrolled in K-12 Who Are English Learners; (2) English Language…