Assessment

During this hands-on training designed for school or districtwide teams, general and special educators will discover how to utilize PLC best practices to develop collaborative partnerships and identify high-leverage structures and strategies that will level the playing field, accelerate learning, and support success for all students.

Schools that truly want to “create lifelong learners” must understand the influence that their actions in the classroom have on realizing this mission. Creating lifelong learners depends on more than good intentions; it depends on intentional actions designed to encourage students to realize that they have the capacity to move their own learning forward regardless of life circumstances or experiences. While this truth is likely something that most teachers already believe, integrating practices that build student self-efficacy into daily instruction remains elusive in most classrooms. Creating lifelong learners happens only when teachers move from knowing about the importance of student self-efficacy to doing something about it.

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.

Anisa Baker-Busby, EdD, serves as an elementary school principal in middle Georgia. She has over 16 years of experience working in high-poverty schools as an elementary teacher and administrator.

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.

Learn how to balance traditional written assessments with performance tasks and conversations, and how to harness the power of tablets and smartphones to capture digital evidence of students' learning.

Dawn Caruso, EdD, is a former district administrator of assessment and accountability in Florida. She also served as a virtual school administrator as well as a literacy coach at the state and school level.

Haley Vogel, EdD, is assistant principal at Pine Island Academy in St. Johns County, Florida. Her more than 20 years of experience in education includes six years as a school leader and 13 years teaching. She is passionate about working with teacher teams to rethink 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.