The intersection in 2020 of the new COVID-19 pandemic with the ongoing pandemic of anti-black racism exacerbated existing injustices as well as caused and revealed new inequities in US higher education. Because inequities in assessment in particular were intensified by these twin pandemics, faculty at several US colleges revised assessment…

Teacher evaluations can be used by states and districts to support and develop an exceptional workforce. Accurate evaluations based on quality data can help differentiate teacher performance, inform feedback, improve professional development, provide opportunities for pay increases and advancement, and provide rationale for teacher dismissals. Yet…

How can school counselors support large-scale postsecondary and career-readiness initiatives? While schools and districts want to use personalized learning or individualized learning plans as a way to align students' school experiences to their postsecondary and career goals, schools may lack the human capital to support and guide this endeavor.…

Although annual state tests had been federally required since 2001, and the consortia and standards were led by states, the new tests became a focal point of narratives about federal overreach and over-testing. Current wisdom holds that testing has become politically toxic. There are real risks that some states are rolling back advancements in…

A Vygotskian approach to assessment is proposed by invoking the distinction between the development of lower and higher psychological functions. Higher psychological functions are specifically human and develop with the use of cultural tools via mediation. Accordingly, a distinction is made between tests that are based on association, which have…

The Association of Public & Land-grant Universities (APLU) launched the "Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success" initiative in the fall of 2018. The South Eastern Cluster brought together a diverse set of institutions from this region of the country that included several of the larger universities, the North Carolina System…

The purpose of this report is to provide readers with a comparative analysis of the Massachusetts workforce "system" structures and performance reporting processes compared to other states. Though the federal workforce development system is often examined in its entirety and individual state systems are at times examined independently,…

In most states kindergarten entry assessments (KEA) are employed primarily to inform parents and teachers. KEAs can serve as a key indicator of child development at formal school entry to inform education, but also could serve as a baseline for assessing progress in the early grades. However, their usefulness for this purpose is limited because…

The 2016-2017 academic year marks the second year of statewide implementation of the North Carolina K-3 Formative Assessment Process: Kindergarten Entry Assessment (FAPKEA). The assessment, developed and implemented by the Office of Early Learning (OEL) at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, is a comprehensive formative assessment…

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, which requires the majority of K-16 education to be temporarily taught online. While unfamiliarity with digital technologies may make the transition to online teaching difficult, the world's sudden dependence on distance learning has sparked the pressing need to implement virtual art education that is efficient and…

A growing number of states are interested in tracking the readiness of children entering kindergarten. In 2010, just seven states (Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, and Vermont) collected Kindergarten Entry Assessment (KEA) data for the purposes of aggregating data at the state level. Since this time, most states report…

This paper describes and compares the profiles of the top accounting programs in the United States as identified by "U.S. News and World Report" in 2004 with the profiles of the top accounting programs in the United States as identified by the "Accounting Degree Review" in 2014. The "Accounting Degree Review"'s list…

Community colleges and open-access, four-year colleges admit nearly everyone who applies and enroll students with a wide range of skills. Many of these colleges run developmental education programs for students who they determine are underprepared for college-level courses. More than two-thirds of community college students are assigned to…

Purpose: Written from the prospective of a school of education dean, the article describes how deans worked with researchers and university system staff to develop multiple measures of teacher preparation program (TPP) quality. Design/Approach/Methods: As a key participant in the development of a multi-methods approach to evaluating (TPP) quality,…

This brief is part of a broad landscape analysis focused on policy and practice issues related to the recognition of prior learning. The landscape analysis focuses on issues arising in the practice of the recognition of prior learning, policies that encourage or limit its adoption, and key research needs and future directions for the field. The…