Think back to your days as a high school student. Did you take the SAT or ACT test? Did you take other standardized tests, maybe an end-of-course exam or graduation test? Was it more important to know how well you...
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What was it like inside a state that implemented a cascade of new education policies over the past five years? In “Inside the Schoolhouse: Untold Stories of Delaware’s Education Progress,” we dive deeply into the First State, whose teachers and...
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The Every Student Succeeds Act gives states the flexibility to decide how to measure student success in high school. This guide—developed with the input of testing and state policy experts across the country and written by a former state assessment...
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“Formative assessment is the way we ensure that the kids are learning. I can stand up there and spout stuff all day long. If I don’t do anything to figure out who’s getting it and who isn’t before it’s too...
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Our formative assessment study, conducted in collaboration with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, is a two-part series. Formative Assessment in the Classroom, the study itself, looks at how teachers use formative assessment every day in their classrooms to answer...
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One of the biggest changes ESSA brings to education policy is a requirement that states start including a broader range of measures for student learning and school success in their accountability systems (you can see an approach Education First proposed...
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I once heard a math teacher ask the Lieutenant Governor of a state if he arrived on time for a meeting they both were attending. He answered yes. She followed her first question with another: “Did you know how long...
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Happy New Year from Education First! We hope you had a restful, joyous and peaceful holiday season. Now that the champagne bottles have been recycled, we are focused on what the future holds for students, educators and school systems in...
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I was a first-time principal when I first read my state’s kindergarten assessment policy. As a former kindergarten teacher, I had a lot of ideas about what 5-year-olds need to learn when they start school: how to sit in a...
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In my second year of teaching, a mentor asked me a seemingly simple question: “How do you know what your students have learned?” I showed her my gradebook, which listed the assignments, quizzes and projects my students completed. “I see...
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