For students to feel empowered in their learning, they must understand the language, purpose, and goals of assessment. Dueck argues that students need to understand what they are supposed to be learning and determine whether they actually learned it. Clear objectives and cooperative assessments can help with these objectives.

What if all students had an opportunity to work through content at their own pace? What if all students had to master content before they moved on? The authors take their flipped-classroom model to the next level by flipping their classroom for mastery. In the flipped-mastery model, the teacher begins by organizing content around specific…

Education has a long-standing practice of turning worthwhile learning goals into lists of bits. One might even say that this practice is the original sin in curriculum design: take a complex whole, divide it into small pieces, string those together in a rigid sequence of instruction and testing, and call completion of this sequence…

Argues that overreliance on standardized tests contributes to the deterioration of educational standards, teacher passivity, and lack of student involvement in academic studies, thus undermining democratic education; lists several alternatives to standardized testing. (MCG)

Defining "curriculum documents" as all written forms a curriculum might take (such as philosophy statements, scope and sequence displays, curriculum guides, instructional units, resource units, or courses of study), this article provides criteria and an instrument for evaluating such documents. (JM)

Calls for simplicity when presenting data on student achievement. Data should help teachers improve teaching and learning, and focus on specific goals such as determining how many students are succeeding in a subject and, within that subject, what are the areas of strength or weakness. (Contains 22 references.) (WFA)

A primer for schools attempting to analyze the data they collect. Describes ways schools can get a better picture of how to improve learning by gathering, intersecting, and organizing four categories of data more efficiently: (1) demographic data; (2) student-learning data; (3) perceptions data; and (4) school-processes data. (WFA)

In this article, the author draws attention to the fact that in school evaluations, students will improve on state-mandated tests, but the improved scores will not influence a school's adequate yearly progress (AYP) status because those students' scores do not cross the proficiency point. A state's proficiency point on each of its standardized…

David Niguidula, an education consultant who helped research the effectiveness of digital portfolios as an assessment tool in the mid-1990s, discusses core questions for schools planning to use digital portfolios. Schools must take time to identify the purpose of portfolios, plan what will go into portfolios, and decide how to assess portfolio…