Research Findings: Kindergarten is the gateway to education and a point of great variability in children's knowledge and skills. As a result, there is keen interest in kindergarten entry assessments (KEAs) to understand and address gaps in early skills. This study rigorously investigated the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Kindergarten Entry…

Previous writings focus on why centering assessment design around students' cultural, social, and/or linguistic diversity is important and how performance-based assessment can support such aims. This article extends previous work by describing how a culturally responsive classroom assessment framework was created from a culturally responsive…

Over the past few years, several states have begun to explore or pilot different through-year assessments to serve as replacements to the traditional end-of-year summative assessments that are currently the predominant source of information used by states to meet federal accountability requirements. While there are several different assessment…

The purpose of the present study was to compare the classification accuracy of a previous year's end-of-year state assessment, a computer-adaptive diagnostic assessment (i-Ready), and the combination of the previous year's end-of-year state assessment with the following year's "i-Ready" performance to predict the rate of students passing…

To facilitate a more definitive understanding of the usefulness of formative assessment, this meta-analysis examined the impact of formative assessment on student academic achievement in the K-12 classroom. The study analyzed 258 effect sizes from 118 primary studies published around the world. By applying a broad lens for defining and…

This report uses data from the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels to understand the state of infrastructure to support elementary social studies instruction during the 2021-2022 school year. The report is focused at the elementary (specifically, kindergarten through grade 5 [K-5]) level because the authors hypothesized that infrastructure…

The current 2025 American Indian/Alaska Native Students in Oregon Report provides updated data on key indicators for American Indian/Alaska Native students in Oregon to complement the continued conversation and progress towards Native student success. This report provides a comprehensive and inclusive overview of American Indian/Alaska Native…

This report is the first in a series of five reports considering career-readiness features within high school assessments. Utilizing feature analysis and cognitive lab interviews, the primary objective of this study was to verify and validate the existence of specific career-readiness features in select math and English language arts (ELA) test…

In this study, we explored the extent to which teachers agree on the ordering and separation of levels of two different learning progressions (LPs) in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. In a panel meeting akin to a standard-setting procedure, we asked teachers to link the items and responses of summative educational assessments to LP…

This report is the second in a series considering career-readiness features within high school assessments. Experts in English language arts and math were trained to rate a selection of active Grade 8 and Grade 11 Smarter Balanced items using feature set lists that were refined within the items' respective content areas (30 features for ELA items;…

This report is the fourth in a series considering career-readiness factors within existing high school assessments. The primary goal of this study was to provide a preliminary validation of the career-readiness features identified in prior reports by exploring how different participant groups with different levels of experience in the…

This study describes the phenomenon of how first-year teachers learn to evaluate students learning by (letter) grades. Grades seem simple enough; but in reality, each grade carries serious consequences with it--for either good or bad. For example, grades affect benefits/consequences at home; they affect placement in remedial or advanced courses;…

Creativity and the Common Core State Standards are both important to today's teachers. Yet, for many educators, nurturing students' creativity seems to conflict with ensuring that they learn specific skills and content. In this book, the authors outline ways to adapt existing lessons and mandated curricula to encourage the development of student…

In September and October of 2017, the Center on Education Policy conducted a survey of state deputy superintendents of education or their designees to learn about states' early efforts in implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Most of those survey findings are described in the CEP publication "Planning for Progress: States…

The "PARCC College- and Career-Ready (CCR) Determinations in ELA/literacy and mathematics" describe the academic knowledge, skills, and practices in English language arts/literacy and mathematics students must demonstrate to show they are able to enter directly into and succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing courses and relevant…