Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Grade Level: Middle School (6-8)

Supporting the Implementation of NGSS through Research: Assessment

From the authors: “The NGSS [Next Generation Science Standards] identify three dimensions essential for providing students with a quality science education: science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts across domains of science, and disciplinary core ideas. Integrating these dimensions provides a meaningful context for science content and practices – how science knowledge is acquired and understood through conceptual […]

Deeper Learning: Policies for a 21st Century Education

From the Introduction: “This report is aimed at supporting state boards of education that are working on providing significantly more students with deeper learning opportunities and facilitating board-level conversations on key related topics. The report provides foundational principles that underlie deeper learning, explores issues, provides state examples, and includes worksheets that boards can use to facilitate […]

Literacy Design Collaborative

LDC is a national community of educators providing a teacher-designed and research-proven framework, online tools, and resources for creating literacy-rich assignments and courses across content areas. Tools and resources include the Teacher Workspace, LDC Exemplary Module Library, Collaborative Module Design tool, and Mini-Task Library (a growing collection of assignments to improve students’ performance on specific […]

Using Formative Reading Assessment to Enhance Content Area Learning

This resource is an archived webinar from the Literacy in Learning Exchange, a coalition of stakeholders representing experts and organizations in advancing literacy learning. This webinar presents formative assessment strategies for guiding literacy instruction in all content areas. It is led by two secondary-level educators from a school district in Champaign, Illinois: Scott Filkins and […]

Model Curriculum

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) Model Curriculum Units consist of a unit overview, lesson plans, embedded performance assessments, and ideas for instructional resources. The design teams used Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011) to structure the units. There are six units for grades 7-8, and there are nine units for […]

Classroom Challenges from the Mathematics Assessment Resource Service

These “Classroom Challenges” are ready-to-use math lessons that showcase Common Core State Standards in mathematics (CCSSM) aligned instructional planning at the lesson level and are designed to support classroom formative assessment in grades 6-10. The resource provides 20 lessons per grade, all available for download at no cost, and all designed to reveal student thinking, […]