Develop a powerful system of assessment

Solution Tree Assessment Center (STAC) On-Site Professional Learning

Carefully designed to optimize learning for teachers, coaches, and administrators, our customizable STAC professional development services will help increase your staff’s assessment literacy and boost the hope, efficacy, and achievement of your students. Receive personalized support and guidance from our team of assessment experts as you implement purposeful assessment that fosters student engagement and increases instructional agility.

Where are you on your professional learning journey?

Your school or district is ready to start building expertise with Assessment Center professional development. See one-day services

You need specialized Assessment Center professional learning services to deepen your expertise. See two-to-four-day services

You're a high-functioning team looking to sustain your Assessment Center expertise, leadership, and achievement. See multi-day services

Your Goal

Building Your Skills

One‑Day Services

Keynote

Bring a keynote speaker into your school, and inspire your team to take the next steps to improve assessment processes. Our assessment keynotes typically include a presentation delivered by one of our experts, as well as a question-and-answer segment that gives participants the opportunity to dive deeper into assessment topics of interest.

A Call to Action

Educators will explore the need for change in assessment practices and develop a clear vision for internal assessment practices.

Your Goal

Deepening Your Skills

Two‑to‑Four‑Day Services

Collaborative Common Assessments

Explore the loose and tight structure of collaborative common assessments. Gain tools, protocols, and strategies to design and effectively employ quality assessments that enable teams to collect meaningful instructional data.

  • Identify the process of designing and the practice of employing a robust and balanced assessment system at the classroom level.
  • Focus on the keys to accurate design and effective use of collaborative common assessments.
  • Gain supportive tools, such as planning templates and protocols.

Rethinking Grading to Develop Confident Learners

Ensure that your grading systems are accurate, fair, specific, and timely. Learn processes for:

  • Evaluating your current grading system
  • Discussing contentious grading issues with colleagues
  • Engaging all stakeholders in the feedback and grading process

Developing Creative Processes in the Classroom through Formative Assessment

Develop and enhance creative processes within any classroom setting through the use of strong assessment practices. This on-site engagement equips educators with practical tools to design rich, authentic learning experiences that encourage wonder, inquiry, and creative development rather than simply compliance and “right” answers.

  • Examine the connection between effective assessment and students’ creative development.
  • Develop an understanding of the creative process and its four critical stages.
  • Explore the numerous benefits of encouraging and developing students’ creative thinking skills in any learning context.
  • Acquire concrete strategies for developing strong formative assessment practices that support self-assessment and feedback—critical when unlocking students’ creative skills.

Coaching Students in the Classroom through Effective Feedback

Maximize student self-efficacy and growth by providing high-quality feedback students can act on. Empower teachers to evolve their role and learn how to coach every student to success every day.

  • Analyze the impact of learning-centered classroom language and formative assessment on student learning.
  • Understand the importance of effective communication in the classroom, as well as how giving feedback works and what a student-centered culture looks like.
  • Learn how to deliver individualized next steps and support students through the feedback loop and the gradual release of responsibility.
  • Embrace the qualities of actionable. feedback and examine the effect on student engagement and intrinsic motivation.

Your Goal

Sustaining Your Skills

Multi‑Day Services

Developing Assessment Literacy

Prepare leaders and teachers to understand and implement the practices necessary to create a learning-rich culture through systematic assessment.

Implementing and Affirming with Evidence

Partner with us to develop a custom learning plan designed to meet your unique needs and challenges. With our evidence-based RTI content along with on-site professional development and virtual training opportunities, we are uniquely positioned to help you build an MTSS that’s strong enough to make a real difference in student achievement.

Embedded Practice, Systems Alignment, and Sustainability

Teams will create a unified and sustainable approach to school improvement and student learning. Ensure school and district leaders can become assessment leaders.

Embedded Coaching

Build your school or district's assessment expertise with on-site coaching. Our experts will mentor and support your staff through every phase of the assessment process: from developing a clear vision for assessment and designing learning-rich assessment experiences to ensuring equitable grading and using data to plan next steps.

Customized Services

Share your goals and challenges with us, and we’ll design a custom learning plan based on our results-oriented assessment content. Through a targeted mix of on-site professional development and virtual training opportunities, our experts will help you develop authentic assessment practices that increase achievement and build confidence in all learners.

Global PD

Use Global PD to access online tools to analyze your students’ data by grade level, by classroom, and by individual student, as well as schoolwide. This award-winning digital tool will help your team:

  • Identify essential standards, create student-friendly learning targets, and build common assessments
  • Group students by proficiency level and create graphs or charts that enable teams to analyze data—student by student and skill by skill
  • Turn data into usable information

Also, learn how to incorporate common formative assessments into your practices using the Common Formative Assessment video playlist.

Coaching Academy

Build capacity over a yearlong series of professional development sessions for creating and supporting effective assessment practices.

  • Evaluate current assessment practices and explore the complexities of a balanced assessment architecture.
  • Explore assessment practices that support quality decision-making for instructional agility in the classroom.
  • Support leadership teams as they navigate transforming assessments to develop student investment in the process.