Blog article
Equitable learning recovery must be grounded in solid research
January 2022
Description
The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with political and social unrest, has deeply disrupted the lives and learning experiences of most students. It has created an urgent need to address long-standing opportunity gaps and has highlighted the importance of providing resources that support student achievement, social-emotional learning, and physical and mental well-being. This urgency for action to address the impacts is valid, but it has also created a noisy environment of potential options of what might be best for students. It’s critical, now more than ever, for decisions to be grounded in solid research.
See MoreTopics: COVID-19 & schools, Equity
Related Topics
Do high flyers maintain their altitude?
In the visualizations in this exhibit, you can compare the performance and growth of various groups of high achievers to that of their peers over multiple years.
Topics: Equity, High-growth schools & practices
A level playing field: College readiness standards
Some of our assumptions about the growth and performance of students from high-poverty schools relative to their peers from wealthier schools may be challenged in this data gallery, where you can explore how school poverty level interacts with student growth, college readiness, and college access.
Topics: Equity, College & career readiness
A level playing field: College readiness standards
This study examines the academic growth of 35,000 elementary and middle school students in 31 states—all of them high achievers within their own schools—over a three-year period.
Topics: Equity, College & career readiness
Do high flyers maintain their altitude? Performance trends of top students
In this study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, achievement trends from NWEA’s longitudinal growth database were used to track students who scored at or above the 90th percentile on this assessment in order to see if they maintained their high achievement.
Topics: Equity, High-growth schools & practices
What does equity and accessibility look like within assessment?
Creating tests and items from the beginning with Universal Design for Learning in mind, removing barriers by adding alt-tags, and incorporating more culturally rich materials are all steps NWEA is doing to improve our equity for all students.
Topics: Equity, Accessibility
NWEA promotes accessibility in assessment with release of image description guidelines
Image descriptions are important to make computer-based assessments accessible to students using assistive technology (AT) devices, such as screen readers and refreshable braille displays. NWEA, with support from the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), has created guidelines for describing many variations of images, charts, and graphics targeted specifically to the disciplines of reading, language usage, science, and mathematics.
Topics: Equity, Accessibility
A longitudinal study of reading growth for students with visual impairments
This study compares reading growth for students with visual impairments with a nationally normed group of students from the general population using data from the NWEA MAP Growth assessment.
Topics: Equity, Accessibility, Reading & language arts
