Opportunities exist in Title II-A, now more than ever before, to design and fund strategies uniquely tailored to support school and teacher leaders. States are preparing to submit their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans in April, and after reviewing...
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A lot has changed since 2010, when states began adopting Common Core State Standards and aligned assessments. Each year has seen some states attempt to change or repeal entirely the new standards and assessments, making for a constantly shifting landscape....
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The year was 2013. Opposition to the Common Core—and to the new assessments aligned to these more rigorous standards—was running high. And states were suddenly questioning their prior commitment to using high quality assessments, like PARCC and Smarter Balanced, to...
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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) gives all states the chance to dramatically change the way they approach and think about public education. “Making the Most of ESSA” is a reference guide designed to help policymakers and other stakeholders leverage...
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Sailors for centuries have used the North Star to gauge their relative location to their ultimate destination. Its remarkable light and reliability as a celestial marker, even as the earth spins, means that no matter where ships sail, they can...
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When Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute declared an “accountability design competition” on January 5, 2016, with a submission deadline of January 26 and a 2,000 word count limit, we jumped right in. The competition asked for submissions...
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When the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) became law in 2015, it granted states unprecedented authority to innovate and create new accountability systems. In this brief we outline our vision for what a next-generation state accountability system could look like....
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I was a first-time principal when I first read my state’s kindergarten assessment policy. As a former kindergarten teacher, I had a lot of ideas about what 5-year-olds need to learn when they start school: how to sit in a...
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Our updated primer on Common Core-aligned assessments offers policymakers, staff, education leaders and advocates reusable slides that make the case for why we need new and better tests of student learning. The primer also digs into the different testing options...
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It’s time for a more strategic approach to assessment. Schools, school districts and charter management organizations (CMOs) need to take a fresh look at what is measured: which assessments we give, when and why, and how the data are used....
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