Comparability Isn’t All or Nothing
Understanding comparability as a multifaceted problem—not a yes-or-no issue—can help states as they create innovative assessment systems.
Read MoreCategory: Assessment
Teaching & Assessing 21st Century Skills: A Focus on Student Agency
Agency—the ability to control one’s own thoughts, processes and actions—is a key skill for students to master. But assessing that mastery is challenging.
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The Challenges of Assessing 21st Century Competencies
A new report from the Center explores the challenges of assessing 21st century competencies and offers practical advice.
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Subtraction in Assessment and Accountability (Re)Design
Resisting our urge to add design layers to assessment and accountability systems—and subtracting instead—can produce better solutions.
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Assessment Score Reports Must Get Better!
Two relatively easy changes in states’ assessment score reports can go a long way toward helping users understand the results.
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We’re Better Together!
Collaboration defined our work in 2024 and is at the heart of the Center’s philosophy. When we push one another to hone our ideas, we reach new heights.
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Equity and the Accessibility Game Plan
Key strategies from the world of accessibility offer helpful guidance in advancing equity in educational testing in K12 schools.
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Test Security: Expanding Our Ideas to Support Score Integrity
Test security has typically focused on preventing, detecting and acting on irregularities. But it should also support fairness and equity.
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Through-Year Assessment: The Importance of Score Reports
Score reports are crucial to a through-year assessment system. We interviewed users of Montana’s new system to see how they interpreted and planned to use information from score reports.
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Teaching & Assessing 21st Century Skills: A Focus on Intercultural Understanding
Intercultural understanding is an important 21st century skill for students, but assessing it is challenging. These guiding principles can help.
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“This Test Is Instructionally Useful.” Where’s the Evidence?
Companies often say their assessments are instructionally useful, but they rarely provide evidence to support those claims.
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Assessment Consequences Matter: A Look Back at RILS 2024
Our annual conference asked an important question: How do we minimize the unintended negative consequences of assessment for individuals and systems?
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Redistributing Responsibility for Teachers’ Assessment Literacy
Understanding assessment and using it well should be the responsibility of the entire school community, not just its teachers.
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What Do We Know About Innovative Assessment?
Are states creating tests that are truly innovative? To answer that, we took a look at the characteristics, process and purposes of innovation.
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Shifts in Student Enrollment: Should They Affect Test Score Interpretations?
Schools that experience pronounced enrollment shifts should consider their impact when interpreting achievement patterns over time.
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We Make Assessment Literacy Too Hard!
Insights from behavioral economics can help us do right by teachers and stop blaming them for struggling to understand assessment data.
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The Importance of Guiding Principles in Education
Education systems like accountability and assessment are complex, so it’s essential to create a set of principles that serve as a north star in their design.
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Bringing a Fresh Perspective to Assessment Purpose
Two California school districts conducted reviews of their required assessments. In the second of a two-part series, we share what they learned.
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