With a national reputation for high standards and a rigorous assessment system, Massachusetts now faces a critical transition. The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's (BESE) December 2015 decision to develop a new state assessment (Next-Generation MCAS) brought with it the opportunity to improve the 2011 state standards for…

Based on Laura Colker, Derry Koralek, and Diane Trister Dodge's classic book, originally published by NAEYC in 1993, High-Quality Early Childhood Programs offers detailed descriptions of what one should see in high-quality programs (and why) to provide a strong foundation of child development knowledge and principles translated into practice.…

Reporting assessment results to the public has been a part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) since the early 1990s, with the reauthorization of ESEA as the Improving America's Schools Act in 1994. In 1997, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) included this requirement to make sure that assessment participation…

Explore the practical steps teacher teams must take to establish clear, comprehensive assessment systems that guide instruction and strengthen PLCs. This book has the capacity to reignite passion and energy assessment practices bring as tools to guide teaching and learning. Strengthen instructional agility in professional learning communities with…

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) serves over 19 million primary, middle, and high school students from across 26 states and affiliates (Smarter Balanced, n.d). As one of the two Race to the Top (RTT)-funded assessment consortia, Smarter Balanced is responsible for developing formative, interim, and summative…

Although debate about the adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has been extensive, there is unanimity on the importance of college and career readiness standards. If statewide assessments are not aligned to the workplace and college requirements of reading and comprehending more complex text, then states will keep…

This memorandum provides a summary of the indicators of college- and career-readiness used in nine states: Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah. This scan was conducted at the request of the California Comprehensive Center, and focuses on data from states' Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)…

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether there would be a difference in academic growth measured by gain scores when parents and students received a cumulative standards-based progress report. Participants included 116 fifth grade math students in a Dallas-Fort Worth Area school. Data from district assessments were used to produce…

The Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) examines how college- and career-readiness (CCR) standards are implemented, whether they improve student learning, and what instructional tools measure and support their implementation. Established in July 2015 and funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S.…

In this article, David Conley focuses on how to assess meaningful learning in ways that promote student achievement while simultaneously meeting system accountability needs. The article draws upon research that supports the notion that a major shift in educational assessment is needed in order to encourage and evaluate the kind of learning that…

The growth of teachers' professional knowledge and skills has been the topic of policy, research, and even philosophy for many decades. The assessment of English Learners (ELs), a more specific concern, has become an interest of the educational community in just the past 40 years (e.g., Harris, 1969). The authors' task in this chapter is to…

Until the late 1990s, Qatar's educational system used the intrinsic-nationalistic and cultural traditions of Arabic schools. The Qatari leadership and stakeholder was outdated; hence, they approached the RAND Corporation to examine and analyze the existing educational system and recommend options for building a new educational system. The RAND…

Currently, states are moving forward with developing or adopting new English language proficiency (ELP) assessments aligned with the new academic standards in order to meet accountability requirements. In this transition, it is essential to identify areas of improvement for current ELP assessment practices and discuss ways to implement effective…

Written for the general public, this article unpacks the "dialogue gap" in education and raises concerns about what can happen when groups dependent on one another are not talking. Part of the problem involves a matter of scale; policymakers rarely talk about children as individuals as opposed to as aggregates. The larger policy context…

Education policymakers and educators in Alabama are committed to improving the state's public education system to ensure that students gain the knowledge and skills they need to graduate from high school ready for real life. The state is on the path to implementing higher academic standards--the College and Career Ready Standards--which lay a…