State leaders have long recognized the value of statewide tests. Many had well-developed testing systems long before the No Child Left Behind Act, signed in 2002, required annual assessments in grades 3-8. Another sign of that recognition is the recent plethora of new state testing requirements for K-3 students. But would states continue to test…

Meaningful inclusion of quantitative reasoning into mathematics instruction requires meaningful ways to evaluate it. Few formative assessments exist to evaluate the strategies students use when reasoning mathematically. The Framework for Evaluating Quantitative Reasoning Strategies presented in this article provides teachers with categories for…

Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) Science for use with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) assessments are available for the 2016-17 school year. These new assessments measure student growth toward understanding of the multidimensional NGSS performance expectations. This report presents MAP Science for use with NGSS by presenting and…

Recent educational accountability efforts have married student assessments with reform mandates and sanctions. As a result, students--beginning in early elementary grades--are feeling the pressures of this new era of high-stakes accountability. This article chronicles a story of the consequences of high-stakes testing on a father and his son.…

Ensuring science for all in the classroom requires that all students are afforded ways to grasp key science and engineering practices; however, we know that the practice of "obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information" can be a challenging task for children with high incidence disabilities (NGSS Lead States 2013, p. 15).…

With all of the reform models, research-based programs, leadership training, and professional development focused on reading and writing, we certainly know more about literacy today than we ever have before. So why are schools still suffering with low literacy levels? The answer lies in ineffective and unbalanced literacy instruction. Through the…

Multiple-choice testing is an educational reality. Rather than complain about the negative impact these tests may have on teaching and learning, why not use them to better understand your students' true mathematical knowledge and comprehension? Maryann Wickett and Eunice Hendrix-Martin show teachers how to move beyond the student's answer--right…

The famed playwright Harold Pinter, having just been introduced as a very good writer, was once asked by a six-year-old boy if he could do a "w." The author suspects that "w" was a difficult letter for this young man, and he judged the writing capability of others accordingly. This student's assumption--that being a "good…

Since 2007, when this technical report was originally issued, the assessment field has made considerable progress in developing valid and reliable screening measures for early mathematics difficulties. This update includes new research published since 2007. It focuses on valid and reliable screening measures for students in kindergarten and first…

It is common practice for elementary classes to plant seeds so that students have the opportunity to observe them germinate and grow. Beyond introducing plant anatomy, this relatively simple activity has the potential to engage children as young plant scientists who investigate the basic needs and behaviors of plants. In this article, the authors…

In "Beyond Test Scores: Leading Indicators for Education," Foley and colleagues (2008) define leading indicators as those that "provide early signals of progress toward academic achievement" (p. 1) and stress that educators "need leading indicators to help them see the direction their efforts are going in and to take…

Although the teaching of photosynthesis occurs yearly in elementary classrooms, one thing that makes it challenging is the inclusion of English language learners (ELLs). This article presents several activities for teaching and assessing of photosynthesis in a third grade classroom. The activities incorporate the photosynthesis content, teaching…

The Elementary School Success Profile (ESSP) is a social environmental assessment tool that collects data from third, fourth, and fifth graders, their parents or guardians, and their teachers. Ensuring the validity of the data collected with the child-report component was a primary concern during the development of the ESSP. This article describes…

This document offers a planning tool for grades 3-7 that can be used by regional comprehensive centers, other technical assistance centers, and state departments of education to plan professional development for teachers. It is based on the "National Mathematics Advisory Panel Report" which was published in 2008. The panel synthesized its final…

The purpose of this article is to document the legacy and continuing influence of Michael Pressley's work in the field of reading research and instruction. Descriptions are provided to demonstrate how he translated his data from the cognitive sciences into highly effective pedagogy. A second component of this article discusses how Michael…