In this age of mounting educational accountability-- and the wide-spread implementation of the Alaska State Standards, CCSS and the RTI/MTSS framework—K-12 educators everywhere are being asked to administer ever-increasing numbers of assessments to their students. Teachers screen students to determine who may need additional assistance in learning to read, administer diagnostic assessments to students to determine their skills strengths and weaknesses for planning instruction, and monitor students’ progress to determine if their skills are showing improvement. All this testing can take a lot of time and requires a lot of paperwork. It certainly has an impact on the amount of time teachers have available for planning and instruction. Many educators—and parents-- are becoming frustrated with this situation, and wonder if all this testing is really helping our students. This session takes a close look at WHY these assessments are being used, HOW to select and administer the most time-efficient and valuable assessments, and—most important of all--how to USE the data to make key instructional decisions that can truly help us provide the best possible reading instruction to all students. In the same way that we expect our physicians to make their decisions about our health and wellness by using the best information available, educators must use assessment tools to inform and guide our professional decisions regarding students’ academic “health and wellness”. But because it is instruction—not testing—that is most important task of schools, we must select and use reading assessments as efficiently and effectively as possible.
