COVID-19 has turned schooling into a universal large-scale experiment. Education systems, schools, and classrooms have had to stop many old practices and invent new ones. These changes were difficult and undertaken in a period of social crisis. However, as teachers return to school this fall, it would be a great mistake to slip back into…

John R. Troutman McCrann, a math educator and teacher leader at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, writes that teachers' autonomy to design and assess student learning has been siphoned away. In this article, he makes an argument for why assessment should be left in the hands of those who know students and standards…

"U.S. students are being educated less well these days than they should be," writes W. James Popham. One key contributing factor is that educators often use the wrong tests to make their most important educational decisions. Two recent events have made it a perfect time to change the way we conduct our educational testing: growing…

This article describes a language arts teacher's two-tiered way of using assessment data, which uses both standardized assessment data and teacher-created "skills" inventories. Standardized test data may help see where a learner performed in a previous year on items that often do not line up too well with future content. Standardized…

Researching. Synthesizing. Reasoning with evidence. The PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments are clearly setting their sights on complex thinking skills. Researchers Joan Herman and Robert Linn look at the new assessments to see how they stack up against Norman Webb's depth of knowledge framework as well as against current state tests. The…

Kelly Gallagher writes that "wide swaths of students are not developing their writing skills--skills we know to be foundational to their literate lives." In this article, he explains how school districts can go about developing students' writing skills in all content-area classrooms. He highlights five reasons why students should write…

New research sheds light on the claim that U.S. students' achievement lags behind that of students worldwide. This research reveals a paradox: While large amounts of U.S. students who take the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) fail to meet its Proficient benchmarks in reading and math, when students' results on NAEP are…

How important is it that every student in a school is excited about learning? Should a student be allowed to use all his/her strengths in learning? Do you know someone who wasn't a particularly good student but has been very successful in life? What these seemingly unrelated questions have in common is an appreciation for the range of talents that…

Not long ago, the author had the wonderful opportunity to visit schools in China and speak to Chinese educators. Everywhere she went, teachers and administrators asked her the same question: How can we help our students become more flexible, creative thinkers? She was struck by the contrast between these conversations and the ones she most often…

In this interview conducted by educator Arnold Dodge, education historian Diane Ravitch discusses what's wrong with the agenda of the "corporate reform movement." She notes that a current obsession with testing and a persistent blaming of teachers is subverting learning for students. The emphasis on competition, entrepreneurship, and…

Although using the five-paragraph formula to teach essay writing is a ubiquitous practice--and many K-12 teachers defend it--Campbell argues that having students write according to this formula does more harm than good. The formula's tight structure stops the very critical thinking students need to do to strengthen their cognition and their…

Has the academic achievement gap between high-income and low-income students changed over the last few decades? If so, why? And what can schools do about it? Researcher Sean F. Reardon conducted a comprehensive analysis of research to answer these questions and came up with some striking findings. In this article, he shows that income-related…

Unless school leaders do more to help teachers, students, parents, taxpayers, and other key groups understand the need for change and the key roles they can play, school improvement will be spotty and nearly impossible to sustain, writes Public Agenda senior fellow Jean Johnson. Citing multiple surveys of these groups conducted by Public Agenda,…

Recently, two of the authors (Amrein-Beardsley & Collins, 2012) studied the impact of Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), a value-added model used to judge Houston teachers' performance. They examined the cases of four teachers who were terminated in summer 2011, at least in part because of their subpar EVAAS scores. Talking to…

What standardized tests can not do--indeed, what almost no test can do--is capture a child's essence. Tests don't speak to the internal factors that play a major role in life success: curiosity, effort, resilience, and compassion. Howard Gardner and Daniel Goleman have each noted that success stems largely from interpersonal skills. Educators know…