Common Core opponents spent a third day yesterday urging lawmakers to pass a bill to eliminate the education standards in Ohio, and a key sponsor said it could lead to high-performing schools being able to opt out of most state...
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In this series of briefs we provide an introduction to important areas for effective K–12/higher education collaboration and alignment. Each brief tackles a different issue: 1) Overall introduction; 2) Defining college- and career-readiness; 3) Adopting college- and career-ready assessments; 4)...
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In this brief, we address the dual issues of assessment development and use. More than ever, the K-12 and higher education sectors are working together on the quality of assessments to ensure that scores reflect each students’ readiness after graduation....
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Measuring what students know and can do is an essential part of teaching, and like many teaching practices, designing assessments is sophisticated work. In this toolkit, produced under contract as part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Reform Support Network...
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If states and districts want new evaluation systems to improve teaching and raise student achievement, they will need to provide the right resources and supports to guide implementation. This brief introduces and sums up the series, in which we provide practical advice to help leaders develop or refine their teacher evaluation and support systems.
Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) are a way to measure student growth and reinforce effective teaching practices, but they can also be resource-intensive and challenging to implement. In this brief, we explain how state and district leaders can overcome these challenges...
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This framework helps policymakers understand how assessment decisions relate to standards, school/district accountability systems, teacher evaluation goals and high school graduation requirements.
Legislative- and executive-created commissions in three states—Colorado, New Jersey and Ohio—have recently studied their schools’ use of assessments and the time students spend taking tests and offered recommendations for changes. Over the past two years, a handful of national organizations...
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Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) are content- and grade/course-specific learning goals that educators can use to measure what students learn over a period of time. In many states and districts, SLOs are incorporated into educator evaluations and used to measure teachers’...
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In the Reform Integration Framework and Resource Guide, we offer state and local education leaders a framework to identify priorities for integrating new reforms around college- and career-ready standards, assessments and educator evaluation and support systems. The framework also provides more...
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