Moving toward District-Wide K-12 Differentiated Testing Articulation The Need for Educational Testing A key challenge for K-12 education is balancing the need for testing with the time it takes away from instruction. Testing needs for district administrators are often at odds with the needs of special education and intervention departments. At the
What is a dyslexia screener assessment? A dyslexia screener by definition conditionally identifies students who may have reading difficulties or dyslexia. It is important to understand how it does this. Essentially, the screener looks at early reading skills that students are taught in grades K to 2. If student performance indicates that they
Why Middle Schools in the United States Struggle to Teach Their Students Math Middle school math can be challenging for many students due to a variety of factors. It is important to understand these factors in order to find the best approach in systematically applying a solution, whether at the
Nationally, student K-12 math scores have been at an all-time low as measured by state accountability testing. Much of this started ten to twelve years ago, when state standards were updated to become more rigorous. Math was rightfully expanded to include not just basic numeracy (arithmetics) but also the application of mathematics in the
By Richard Capone, CEO/Co-Founder of Let’s Go Learn, Inc. Florida announced on March 15, 2022 that it is dropping FSA, its end-of-year state test, and replacing it with three shorter progress assessments to be given in the fall, winter, and spring of each year. It is the first state to recognize that high-stakes testing has indeed
When a test is not using a fixed form or fixed set of questions but instead adjusts based on input from the test-taker, it is computer-adaptive. The idea is that the questions change based on the students’ responses as they are taking the test. In practice, there are many different types of computer-adaptive tests.
Having worked in test development for over two decades, I’ve seen educational testing dramatically evolve over the years. This evolution has occurred not only in the use of technology to assess students, but also in people’s understanding of what testing is all about. I am happy to say that this understanding of testing by
This article assumes that you already understand the basic tenets of Response to Intervention (RtI) and will focus on how RtI can be improved and evolved to better meet the needs of students, as well as fit the technologies and conditions in today’s classrooms and districts. If you need a refresher on RtI,
By Richard Capone, Let’s Go Learn, Inc. Standards-based testing in the classroom has been the de facto method for K-12 educational testing. State standards set the target for teachers to teach towards and students to work towards. Administrators use interim assessments, sometimes by the states themselves, or some other benchmark test for quarterly evaluations
