Key Assessment Practices for Acceleration: Implementation in Action

Each year students enter Michigan classrooms with a wide variety of strengths and learning needs. The larger variability of learning experiences students had in 2020 has made this point more salient than ever before. The only way to understand students’ development is through informal and formal assessment. However, it is also more imperative than ever to use valuable school time to prioritize instruction and limit compliance-oriented assessment. In this session, presenters will provide concrete criteria and research-based examples of how districts/schools can reduce assessment time and accelerate learning through focusing on essential skills and clearly targeted assessment purposes. Presenters will draw from existing resources. They will highlight the specific high leverage instructional decisions and associated high-quality literacy assessments from the Early Literacy Assessment System Guide and the Learning Progressions for Developing Skilled Readers and Writers. Additionally, a classroom implementation example will be provided, outlining how teachers can use data to prioritize curriculum resources and instructional strategies.