Formative assessment is essential for improving teaching and learning, and AI and visualization techniques provide great potential for its design and delivery. Using NLP, cognitive diagnostic and visualization techniques designed to analyse and present students' monthly exam data, we developed an AI-enabled visual report tool comprising six…

Schools are utilizing and acquiring more technology to meet the needs of 21st Century learning and the world that their students will enter into. It is imperative that we implement technology-based formative assessment practices to support teacher pedagogy and increase student achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship…

This report presents an approach to evaluating networked improvement communities (NICs) and describes the tools used to apply the approach to a formative evaluation of the Minnesota Alternative Learning Center Networked Improvement Community (Minnesota ALC NIC). In fall 2019 leaders at the Minnesota Department of Education requested support from…

The purpose of this study was to directly observe and investigate the factors that support or hinder the implementation of an integrated approach to formative assessment and to understand how the implementation of formative assessment strategies interact. The authors present findings from a collective case study that included the observation of…

"Authentic Project-Based Learning in Grades 9-12" provides a clear guide to design, develop, and implement real-world challenges for any high school subject. The author lays out five clear, standards-based stages of assessment to help you and your learners process the what, how, and why of authentic project-based experiences. You'll…

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is one of two multi-state consortia that have built new assessment systems aligned to the Common Core State Standards. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is composed of 18 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have worked together to develop a comprehensive assessment system aligned to the…

Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) partnered with the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to conduct a multi-year study of Michigan's implementation of competency-based education in K-12 schools. This mixed-methods study seeks to investigate the implementation and effectiveness of CBE using data from surveys administered to 21j…

This research study investigated whether the effects of response to intervention impacted student achievement in a rural virtual high school, as well as sought to determine staff perceptions of the efficacy of the implementation of RTI within the school. The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative analysis to effectively answer the…

With support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, researchers and experts in mathematics education developed the Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) as a strategy to support the transition to Common Core State Standards in math. MDC provides short formative assessment lessons known as Classroom Challenges for use in middle and high…

This paper reports findings from a multi-year study of the scale-up of Reading Apprenticeship (RA), an approach to improve academic literacy by helping teachers provide the support students need to be successful readers in the content areas. WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI), began developing the program in 1995 and has since reached…

This report describes the Achieve 180 Program in Year 2. The 53 participating schools received Texas Education Agency campus accountability ratings of "Improvement Required" (IR), "Not Rated," or "Former Improvement Required" at the end of the 2017-2018 school year. The 2018-2019 Achieve 180 Program's centralized…

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and the Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) are strategies designed to improve how teachers teach and students learn. The designs encourage teacher collaboration and creativity and offer flexible frameworks for building lessons in all disciplines. Their purpose is to engage students to read challenging…

We explore the use of iPads in a diverse urban high school and the ways in which teachers and students were supported to integrate these tools into their instruction. We provided 4 English teachers with 20 iPads with little or no professional development about how to integrate them into their instruction. Using a formative experiment design, we…

Blending high-quality and rigorous research with pure evaluation practice can often be best accomplished through thoughtful collaboration. The evaluation of a high school drug prevention program (All Stars Senior) is an example of how perceived competing purposes and methodologies can coexist to investigate formative and summative outcome…

In 2017-2018, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) launched Achieve 180, a program centered upon a comprehensive action plan to increase student achievement at 45 schools, including the 27 schools that received the Texas Education Agency Campus Accountability rating of "Improvement Required" (IR) in 2016-2017 and 18 former IR…