Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Grade Level: Middle School (6-8)

What Supports Do Teachers Need to Help Students Meet Common Core State Standards for Mathematics? Findings from the American Teacher and American School Leader Panels

This report examines teacher and school leader perceptions about readiness and professional development (PD) needs related to mathematics state standards. It presents the self-reported responses from teachers, and supplements teacher reports with principals’ perspectives where relevant. Most of the results focus on either the full sample of respondents or on those who indicated that they […]

The New Literacies

“The New Literacies” is an article on the Reading Rockets website. The article describes the need to teach students specific strategies and skills for reading on the Internet, describes instructional models being studied by the New Literacies Research Lab at the University of Connecticut, and highlights initiatives to support Internet and online learning in schools in Finland, Ireland, and […]

Classroom Resources: Lesson Plans

This website includes hundreds of standards-based lesson plans written and reviewed by educators using current research and “best” instructional practices. While the lessons may vary in quality, the reviews are a helpful place to begin looking. The site also has a tool called Student Interactive, which is an online resource for students to record their […]

Developing Citizenship through Rhetorical Analysis

“Developing Citizenship Through Rhetorical Analysis” is a lesson plan available on the ReadWriteThink website that aims to teach students to identify and analyze rhetorical strategies. Intended for students in grades 6-8, the six 50-minute sessions involve: introducing rhetorical strategies used in editorials; teaching students the relationship between rhetorical strategies, author’s purpose, and audience; and providing opportunities for […]

Assessment Tools in Informal Science

This searchable website, created by the PEAR Institute, provides assessment tools for informal science learning. This website allows practitioners, evaluators, researchers, and policy makers with the information to choose appropriate tools for assessing program quality and outcomes for children and youth. The tools found on the website were reviewed by the PEAR staff.

PEAR’s STEM Work

The PEAR Institute (Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency) has created a comprehensive suite of tools that provides information on the quality of students’ science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning experiences and provides a common language around STEM outcomes so students can learn in school and after school settings. The two tools in this […]