Renaissance® Blog
Shareable tips and insightful thoughts on K–12 education. Subscribe to the Renaissance Newsletter and get the latest posts delivered straight to your inbox.
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July 11, 2018
Have you ever been perplexed by a situation like this one? In the fall, a student named Bruno did well on a district assessment. He scored 55 out of 100, which the district considers “proficient” for his grade level. His […]
June 28, 2018
During the 2016–2017 school year, 9.4 million K–12 students read 323 million books and articles, per data captured by Renaissance Accelerated Reader®. Just under 80 pages, the 2018 What Kids Are Reading report is loaded with a ton of reading […]
June 14, 2018
Summer provides a nice—and much needed—break. It also provides a chance to catch up on some reading (in between visits to the beach and not thinking about school, of course). Since we’re in the midst of summer, we asked a […]
May 31, 2018
By Karen Adamec, Literacy Coach Like many schools across the country, my school, Dr. Martin Luther King Elementary School, a Title 1 school in Providence, Rhode Island, is beginning to explore teaching practices and digital learning tools that help students […]
May 24, 2018
By Carol Johnson, PhD, National Education Officer According to the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, more than 4.85 million English Learners were enrolled in US public schools during the 2014–15 school year. Just as for native English-speaking students, the […]
May 8, 2018
Once you’ve found a timely, trustworthy assessment with a well-designed learning progression, it’s time to start assessing your students! . . . or is it? Over-testing is a real concern in today’s schools. A typical student may take more than […]
May 1, 2018
All educational assessments, from lengthy high-stakes summative exams to quick skill checks, share one thing in common: They provide a measure of student learning—knowledge, skill, attitude, and/or ability—at a specific moment in time. When you string together the results of […]
April 24, 2018
Bigger is better . . . isn’t it? When it comes to assessment, this seems to be a common misconception: Some educators mistakenly believe that longer tests are always better measures of student learning. However, that’s just not true. There […]
April 19, 2018
Teaching is difficult. It’s difficult to pinpoint how students are doing, and it’s even more difficult to recognize which students need additional guidance. Yet perhaps the most difficult aspect of the job is ensuring that you give each student the […]
April 17, 2018
Today is test day. In a quiet classroom, children stare at the preprinted sheets in front of them. Some students squirm; they’re nervous. The assessment is timed and they only have 60 minutes to answer all of the questions before […]
April 12, 2018
Engaging students in the right instructional practice at the right time is daunting, especially with students at various learning levels and an average of 22 different instructional practice solutions in every classroom nationwide. No wonder educators are often overwhelmed and […]
April 5, 2018
Kids of all ages need daily reading practice to help build strong literacy skills and achieve college and career readiness, but there are only so many hours in a school day—and more than half of students aren’t spending enough time […]