Assessment

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a world of changes to the field of education, and while some will fade away when the pandemic ends, others are likely to have more staying power—including the way we choose to administer standardized testing. Of course, administrators and educators are no strangers to the...

In early 2020, a group of teachers from Knox County in Tennessee did something unusual. Led by fourth-grade teacher Hedy Hilts Collins, the educators went to their local school board meeting, where they spoke up about the amount of time kindergarten teachers are expected to devote to testing their young...

In order to ensure that all New York City schools follow a cohesive and rigorous curriculum, the New York Department of Education (NYC DOE) has formed Instructional Leader Teams, or ILTs, comprised of school leaders, teachers, and staff who will “serve as the driving force in the school to improve...

The Alabama Literacy Act (ALA) mandates that third graders who are not reading at grade level according to state ACAP results be held back. With state reading proficiency levels at only 45.27%, educators are under immense pressure to identify struggling readers early and provide effective interventions, despite limited resources. ...

The pressure is on for Alabama’s educators and students with the passage of the Alabama Literacy Act (ALA). This bold legislation mandates holding back third graders who are not reading at grade level according to state testing. It’s projected that as many as 10,000 third grade students in Alabama may...

Released in December 2019, the scores from the PISA exam administered in 2018 do not appear to bode well for students in the United States. Before we delve into the latest findings, let’s define the PISA itself.

The National Assessment of Education Progress—also known as the Nation’s Report Card—has measured student performance across the United States for decades. Spearheaded by the National Center for Education Statistics, the assessment tests a representative sample of students from every U.S. state and jurisdiction in a variety of subjects, and NAEP...

When the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores were released in late October 2019, many pundits, journalists, and education observers swiftly deemed the data to be something of a disappointment. Indeed, one might say the collective sigh—of exasperation, not relief—could be heard from coast to coast, with USA...

In Florida, a group of high-school students recently staged a protest to oppose a state law dictating that all students must pass a 10th-grade English language exam to graduate from high school. Students from Armwood High School in Hillsborough County were spurred into action after participating in a hands-on civics...

Assessing students with standardized testing is a given in public schools throughout the United States—especially in the wake of 2001’s federal No Child Left Behind law, which mandated that all students in grades three through eight be tested annually in reading and math, while older students should be periodically...