What Teachers Need to Know About Assessment and Reporting

A guide to formative assessment for teachers that covers how it can improve teaching and learning, practices, and its uses prior, during, and after instruction, and includes answers to questions.

The fifth edition of this comprehensive resource helps future and practicing teachers recognize and assess literacy problems, while providing practical, effective intervention strategies to help every student succeed. DeVries thoroughly explores the major components of literacy, offering an overview of pertinent research, suggested methods and tools for diagnosis and assessment, intervention strategies and activities, and technology applications to increase students' skills. Updated to reflect the needs of teachers in increasingly diverse classrooms, the fifth edition addresses scaffolding for English language learners, and offers appropriate instructional strategies and tailored teaching ideas to help both teachers and their students. Several valuable appendices include assessment tools, instructions and visuals for creating and implementing the book's more than 150 instructional strategies and activities, and other resources. New to the Fifth Edition: Up-to-date and in line with ILA, CCSS, and most state and district literacy standards, this edition also addresses the important shifts and evolution of these standards. New chapter on Language Development, Speaking, and Listening covers early literacy, assessment, and interventions. New intervention strategies and activities are featured in all chapters and highlight a stronger technology component. Updated Companion Website with additional tools, resources, and examples of teachers using assessment strategies.

The fourth edition of this comprehensive resource helps future and practicing teachers recognize and assess literacy problems, while providing practical, effective intervention strategies to help every student succeed. The author thoroughly explores the major components of literacy, providing an overview of pertinent research, suggested methods and tools for diagnosis and assessment, intervention strategies and activities, and technology applications to increase students' skills. Discussions throughout focus on the needs of English learners, offering appropriate instructional strategies and tailored teaching ideas to help both teachers and their students. Several valuable appendices include assessment tools, instructions and visuals for creating and implementing the book's more than 150 instructional strategies and activities, and other resources.

This guide shows how to integrate assessment with teaching and learning to reach educational goals. The aim is to present assessment concepts in a concise manner that can be understood and applied by teachers, administrators, and other school personnel. The chapters, organized around major assessment topics, are: (1) "Integrating Assessment with Teaching and Learning"; (2) "Validity"; (3) "Reliability"; (4) "Fairness"; (5) "Understanding and Using Numerical Data"; and (6) "Interpreting and Using National and State Standardized Assessments." (Contains 20 tables, 29 figures, and 36 references.) (SLD)

The Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment provides scholars, professors, graduate students, and other researchers and policy makers in the organizations, agencies, testing companies, and school districts with a comprehensive source of research on all aspects of K-12 classroom assessment. The handbook emphasizes theory, conceptual frameworks, and all varieties of research (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods) to provide an in-depth understanding of the knowledge base in each area of classroom assessment and how to conduct inquiry in the area. It presents classroom assessment research to convey, in depth, the state of knowledge and understanding that is represented by the research, with particular emphasis on how classroom assessment practices affect student achieventment and teacher behavior. Editor James H. McMillan and five Associate Editors bring the best thinking and analysis from leading classroom assessment researchers on the nature of the research, making significant contributions to this prominent and hotly debated topic in education.

Testing is one of the most controversial of all state and federal educational policies. The effects of testing are quite ambiguous. The same test may lead to different consequences in different circumstances, and teachers may use very different strategies to prepare students for tests. Although most experts agree that mandatory testing leads to teaching to the test, they disagree about whether it leads to meaningless drill, wasted time, de-professionalizing teachers, and demotivating students, or to more challenging and thoughtful curricula, more engaging teaching, increased student motivation, and increased accountability. To help sort through this ambiguity and provide a firmer basis for decisions, The Ambiguity of Teaching to the Test: Standards, Assessment, and Educational Reform offers a hard look at the effects of state testing, and thoroughly examines the ambiguity of test preparation and how test preparation practices are influenced by what teachers know and the leadership coming from the school and district. Drawing on data from a three-year study of New Jersey's testing policy in elementary mathematics and science, it helps to explain the variety of ways that teachers modify their teaching in response to state tests, raises important questions, and offers useful guidance on how state policymakers and local and district school administrators can implement policies that will improve educational equity and performance for all students. It also offers an in-depth analysis of classroom practices that should inform teachers and teacher educators whose goal is to meaningfully implement conceptually based teaching practices. This comprehensive look at the statewide variation in testing practice features: *a data-based, non-ideological treatment of how testing affects teachers, in a field characterized by ideologically driven beliefs and by anecdotes; *an extensive and well-integrated combination of qualitative and quantitative data sources that provide a statewide overview, as well as an in-depth analysis of teachers and classrooms; *a careful analysis of the variety of forms of teaching to the test; and *a multilevel exploration of how a variety of personal and leadership factors can influence teaching to the test. This is an important book for researchers, professionals, and students in educational testing, educational policy, educational administration, mathematics and science education, educational reform, and the politics and sociology of education. It will also prove useful for state policymakers, school and district leaders, and teacher educators and curriculum specialists who are making decisions about how to design and respond to new testing systems.

Collaborative assessment practices lead to strong partnerships Join bestselling authors Margo Gottlieb and Andrea Honigsfeld on an engaging journey to showcase collaborative assessment within assets-driven instructional practices. Integrating instructional and assessment cycles, explore how multilingual learners can interact with each other and their teachers to form lasting partnerships. Using evidence-based, research-informed strategies, Gottlieb and Honigsfeld invite educators to form partnerships to fortify linguistically and culturally sustainable assessment within their classroom routines. Throughout the learning journey, Collaborative Assessment for Multilingual Learners and Teachers offers: Practical tips and adaptable templates to reinforce assessment during instruction Vignettes that bring practical application of key concepts to life Protocols and tools for teachers and multilingual learners to engage in reflective conversations about their learning Recurring colorful icons that capture the travel theme and much more... Collaborative assessment approaches AS, FOR, and OF learning encourage relationship building to foster multilingual learners’ academic, linguistic, cultural, and social-emotional development. This practical guide supports educators in implementing collaborative assessment and welcomes multilingual learners to be partners in the process.

"What we know about teaching Teenagers", 2019 I would like to thank Dr. Richard NeSmith for helping me know more about what goes through teenagers’ minds and grow into a better teacher. Dr. NeSmith’s 28-plus years of teaching experience and careful study of biology, developmental and cognitive psychology make him one of the best experts in the field. His book explains the difficulties students have learning at school and reflects on how to overcome them, promoting a better understanding of the changes going on in teenagers’ lives as well as an elementary understanding of what causes pain points in the brain of the adult-in-the-making. Above all, Dr. NeSmith reminds us that teenagers are individuals, with their personality, strengths, weaknesses, and their ways of showing love and concern. The book has been carefully researched and will make you aware of the cognitive-emotional interactions going on inside the mind of preadolescents to improve your teaching strategies. It is such a privilege to teach and take teenagers from childhood to adulthood. Whether you are a parent, a teacher, or a school administrator you will find in this book strategies to facilitate learning and encourage lifelong learning. =========================================================================== A research-based book addressing brain-based learning and how secondary age students best learn and how teachers can best teach to meet those needs. American public education is on life support like never before. Why? The shift from LEARNING to standardized testing, ticking boxes for administrators, and watering down curricula are some of the reasons. This synthesis of brain-based research emphasizes how students best learn. It is NOT a checklist, it is a strategy that empowered teachers can utilize to improve student learning. But, knowing how teens think enables teachers to know HOW TEENS best LEARN. --Dr. Richard NeSmith