The study uses data from a 2010-2011 school-level randomized experiment of 70 Indiana public schools to examine the impact of two interim assessment programs, mCLASS in Grades K-2 and Acuity in Grades 3-8, on students’ mathematics and reading achievement. Results indicate no overall treatment effect for Grades 3-8 but a statistically significant negative effect in Grades K-2 (i.e., kindergarten and second grade), indicating that students in control schools perform higher than students in treatment schools.
Helping ELLs Meet High Standards
This presentation, centered around the Gettysburg Address, provides an overview of general techniques for providing English language learners (ELLs) with a content preview. Methods include: the use of guiding questions; building background knowledge; bootstrapping on L1 knowledge and skills; pre-teaching academic and domain-specific vocabulary; and instruction in word learning strategies.
Effects of Interim Assessments Across the Achievement Distribution: Evidence From an Experiment
This is a follow-on study from Konstantopoulos et al., 2016. Results generally show that lower-achievers in grades 3-8 seem to benefit more from interim assessments (Acuity) than higher-achieving students. The magnitude of the effects were larger in math than reading; however, no effects were found for grade K-2, which used mCLASS.
The Common Core Ate My Baby and Other Urban Legends
Educational Leadership article in which a noted literacy expert discusses five myths about the new standards and explains what the standards really entail.
The Impact of Indiana’s System of Interim Assessments on Mathematics and Reading Achievement
The randomized controlled study in Indiana found, and the WWC confirmed, that the use of Indiana’s Diagnostic Assessment Tools (mClass for K-2, Acuity for grades 3-8) did not have a statistically significant impact on general mathematics achievement or reading achievement for the full sample of students in grades K-8. However, statistically significant positive effects were found for grades 5 and 6 in mathematics achievement and grades 3-5 in reading achievement. No statistically significant effects were found for mathematics achievement in grades 3 and 4 or on reading achievement in grade 6.
Analysis of the Stability of Teacher-Level Growth Scores from the Student Growth Percentile Model
This study in a Nevada school district tests an implicit assumption of high-stakes teacher evaluation systems that use student learning to measure teacher effectiveness: that the learning of a teacher’s students in one year will predict the learning of the teacher’s future students. The study found that half or more of the variance in teacher scores from the model was due to random or otherwise unstable sources rather than based on reliable information that could predict future performance.