Research has identified characteristics of professional development programmes (PDPs) that are important for accomplishing change in teachers' practice and student achievement. However, these characteristics do not predict and guarantee the outcomes of a specific PDP. In the present study the authors investigated whether the expectancy-value…

After the passage of "No Child Left Behind," and especially after Obama-era Race to the Top initiatives, rising accountability for improved achievement and widespread dissatisfaction with the instructional value of statewide test reports led many school districts to purchase computer-adaptive "interim" testing systems. A common…

We use data from a large-scale experiment conducted in Indiana in 2009-2010 to examine the impact of two interim assessment programs (mCLASS and Acuity) across the mathematics and reading achievement distributions. Specifically, we focus on whether the use of interim assessments has a particularly strong effect on improving outcomes for low…

Lesson study cultivates teachers' capacity for formative assessment by placing student thinking front and center throughout. Lesson study is a form of professional development in which a team of teachers determines a mathematical focus, collaboratively studies student thinking about the topic, designs a lesson about this content, implements 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…

Century Analytics, Inc. conducted a rigorous evaluation of Edmentum's Exact Path to estimate the impact of Exact Path use on student achievement in mathematics in kindergarten through Grade 8. Exact Path is an online educational tool designed to support individualized student instruction. This study's quasi-experimental design (QED), analyses, and…

"Odyssey® Math" is a web-based program developed by Compass Learning® for mathematics instruction in grades K-8. The online program includes a mathematics curriculum and formative assessments designed to support differentiated and data-driven instruction. Based on assessment results, the program generates an individualized sequence of…

This study examined the predictive utility of five formative reading measures: words correct per minute, number of comprehension questions correct, reading comprehension rate, number of maze correct responses, and maze accurate response rate (MARR). Broad Reading cluster scores obtained via the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III) Tests of Achievement…

Drawing on the programme for international student assessment 2009 US data-set, this study examines the relationship between formative assessment and students' reading achievement using a structural equation modelling approach. We find that formative assessment is positively related to students' reading achievement directly and indirectly (through…

Feedback is crucial to students' growth as musicians. Fortunately, the teacher is not the sole source of feedback in the music classroom. Under the right conditions, students can provide actionable feedback to themselves and each other. This article showcases the work of three elementary music specialists who have innovatively incorporated…

In this study, we identified the code-related (decoding, fluency) and language comprehension (vocabulary, listening comprehension) demands of the CBM-Maze test, a formative assessment, and compared them to those of the Gates-MacGinitie test, a standardized summative assessment. The demands of these reading comprehension tests and their…

In this chapter, we describe several intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) designed to support student literacy through reading comprehension and writing instruction and practice. Although adaptive instruction can be a powerful tool in the literacy domain, developing these technologies poses significant challenges. For example, evaluating the…

The Berge et al. article in this volume presents the functional construct of writing that underlies summative and formative assessment of writing as a key competency in Norway. A functional construct implies that specific acts of writing and their purposes constrain what is a relevant selection among the semiotic resources that writing generally…

The overarching questions guiding this interprofessional design-based research study are: (1) How might a suite of assessment tools help K-7 educators visualize learning in their classrooms and (2) How might these visualization approaches inform K-7 educators' changes in classroom assessment? Recognized by their administrators as having…

To determine whether formative writing assessments that are directly tied to everyday classroom teaching and learning enhance students' writing performance, we conducted a meta-analysis of true and quasi-experiments conducted with students in grades 1 to 8. We found that feedback to students about writing from adults, peers, self, and computers…