Assessment

Closing student achievement gaps requires specific actions focused on acceleration and leveling up strategies to achieve grade-level proficiency or beyond. Acceleration is the pathway; we cannot continue to go backward if our goal is to move forward. Discover how to erase inequities in student learning while building hope and confidence in both teachers and students. This is equity in action.

Logan Heflebower has been coaching baseball since his collegiate playing career came to a close in 2019. He is the infield coach at Division II, Colorado Christian University, in Lakewood.

Brad Cawn is a teacher educator, author, researcher, and trainer who specializes in helping schools and teachers integrate ambitious teaching and learning—inquiry-based instruction, disciplinary literacy, project-based learning, etc.—across the content areas.

Jonathan G. Vander Els specializes in supporting teachers and administrators in schools and districts across the country in developing, sustaining, and enhancing structures to support all learners.

Melissa Dickson, EdM, is an outstanding presenter and educator. She is passionate about providing teachers with research-based ideas and strategies that they implement immediately. In her decades as an educator, Melissa has been a literacy coach, staff developer, site-based team leader, mentor teacher, inclusion teacher, classroom teacher, and early childhood teacher.

Dr. Anisa Baker-Busby was appointed principal of Shirley Hills Elementary in July 2022. She has over 20 years of educational experience serving as a teacher and administrator, and her passion is to help schools build systems of support that ensure high levels of learning for all students.

Ken Mattingly is a retired classroom teacher with 27 years of experience. He has implemented classroom assessment for student learning for the past 15 years.

Amy Tollefson is the district-level principal with Osseo Area Schools in a diverse suburb of Minneapolis. Over more than 20 years, she has also served as a secondary school principal, secondary social studies teacher, district office coordinator, and assistant principal.

Rea Smith is an elementary mathematics and science curriculum specialist in northwestern Arkansas. She passionately supports the work of professional learning communities with a focus on common assessments to improve student and teacher learning.

Matt Townsley, EdD, is an associate professor of educational leadership at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He is a former district administrator and teacher in Solon Community Schools, also in Iowa, where he led curriculum, assessment, and school-improvement initiatives, all under the umbrella of a professional learning community philosophy.