5.31.18 Achievement Down Under: How an Australian School is Changing the Conversation with MAP Growth When the staff at MLC Junior School in New South Wales, Australia set out to use MAP Growth to better understand the learning needs of their student population, they had no idea they were... Read more
5.29.18 Formative instructional practice: Using the results and data is what matters In a post about teaching techniques, Maryellen Weimer cautioned readers about loving techniques for the wrong reasons. When I talk about formative assessment or formative instructional practice, I... Read more
5.22.18 How One School is Making the Grade Using Interim Assessment Data Puesta del Sol Elementary in New Mexico’s Rio Rancho school district was graded a D- by the state in 2012. Three years later they received a grade of B+, and they credit this remarkable turnaround... Read more
5.15.18 Answering the Call to Lead I came into education through a temp job. True story. After college, my parents naturally wanted me to get busy with some work. So, I took a temporary job at the Oregon Department of Education. In my... Read more
5.11.18 MAP Reading Fluency named a CODiE Award finalist We are excited to share that our new oral reading fluency assessment, MAP Reading Fluency, has been named a 2018 SIIA CODiE Award finalist in the Best Student Assessment Solution category! The SIIA... Read more
5.8.18 The Power of a Teacher’s Reach On the last day of a conference I attended in November, I was standing in the back of the auditorium listening to George Couros convince us that teachers must embrace social media if we want to be... Read more
5.1.18 3 Keys to Assessment Implementation Success Initiative fatigue. Is that something happening in your school or district? The last ten years of legislation and technology – and changes to both – have driven a lot of new initiatives into the... Read more
4.26.18 How the MAP Growth Insights Report Takes the Headaches Out of Annual Reporting Each spring, many district administrators and leaders are tasked with reporting metrics to others in their communities – from parents to school boards – that answer the question, “How are the... Read more
4.19.18 Making Assessment More Meaningful with Norms If you’ve finished spring testing and are diving into reporting data, you might be looking for a refresher on what norms are and why they are important. An educational norm is simply a picture of... Read more
4.12.18 48 School Days Left – Making the Most of Them I just returned from Spring Break. Not “SPRING BREAK” like the college kids sometimes partake in, but nonetheless, a break from work, during the season of spring. This year, my family was lucky... Read more
4.10.18 We Must See Beyond NAEP Today, the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, scores were released. What some call “the nation’s report card” often starts a debate about what NAEP results tell us about... Read more
4.3.18 It Takes a Village (of Applications) They say it “takes a village” to raise a child, and at NWEA, we believe that means a “village” of approaches: students do better when teachers apply a variety of tools to help them... Read more