CRESST Awarded Hewlett Foundation Grant To Study Assessments and Links to Deeper Learning

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has awarded CRESST a planning grant to evaluate the link between deeper student learning and two new assessments currently under development. Two consortia, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, are creating next-generation state assessment systems to measure the Common Core State Standards, adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.

Click here for a full news release. 

CRESST Awarded PBS Grant

CRESST has been selected for a $100,000 award from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to develop an indicator and reporting system to measure game-based outcomes of the "Ready to Learn" PBS KIDS program.

“This is an exciting opportunity for CRESST/UCLA to have a large-scale positive impact on young children—and their parents and teachers—across America”, said Greg Chung, one of the researchers heading up the development effort together with Noelle Griffin, CRESST’s assistant director for research and development. CRESST Director Eva Baker will serve as the principal investigator on the project.

Click here for more details. 

Performance Assessments Rebound

Performance assessments, tests that require students to "show what they know," are back in the news thanks to federal funding of two large consortia who are creating new assessments to measure the Common Core State Standards. CRESST Director Joan Herman, co-author of the book "A Practical Guide to Alternative Assessment," is quoted in E-School News about how high costs pushed aside performance assessments in the early 1990's.  

Read what Dr. Herman has to say in Performance Assessment Making a Comeback in Schools.

Or read a free copy of The Practical Guide to Alternative Assessment on the CRESST web site. 

CRESST ELL Report Mentioned in Education Week

Education Week recently included a major new CRESST report in its Report Roundup Series. The report found that the longer that students were classified as English Language Learners, the greater the probability that they would eventually drop out of school.

Click here for the Education Week summary, Relationships Among and Between ELL Status, Demographic Characteristics, Enrollment History, and School Persistence. 

Click here for the full CRESST report. 

Abby Reisman Research Published in Major Journal

The journal Cognition and Instruction recently published an article by CRESST Senior Researcher Abby Reisman, reporting her findings from the "Reading Like a Historian" curriculum.  

Dr. Reisman found significant positive effects on four outcome measures that have important implications for both adolescent literacy instruction and history teaching. 

Find out more in her article, Reading Like a Historian: A Document-Based History Curriculum Intervention in Urban High Schools. 

New CRESST Report Examines Teacher Fidelity of Implementation

In this new report, CRESST researchers go beyond measuring the effects of a new program and examine the quality of implementation itself. 

Find out more in CRESST Report 811, Measuring Fidelity of Implementation- Methodological and Conceptual Issues and Challenges. 

You may also be interested in a related CRESST report, Relationships between Teacher Knowledge, Assessment Practice, and Learning- Chicken, Egg, or Omelet.

Professor Li Cai Named CRESST Co-Director

UCLA associate professor of education Li Cai has been named co-director of the Center for the Study of Evaluation and National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CSE/CRESST) at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS). 

"I am very excited about Li Cai's joining the leadership team of Joan Herman, Robert Linn and myself," CSE/CRESST Director Eva Baker said. "His productivity and ingenuity are unprecedented. It is a brilliant appointment of a bright, visionary scholar who will greatly enhance CRESST's leadership in quantitative methods and psychometrics, now and into the future."

Please welcome Professor Cai to the CRESST family. A full UCLA news release is available here. 

CRESST Welcomes Christine Ong

CRESST is extremely pleased to welcome Dr. Christine Ong as a new senior researcher. Her past work has examined approaches in assessing student learning and classroom quality, particularly within early childhood programs. Dr. Ong also has expertise in the research of English Language Learners’ academic language proficiency.

Prior to CRESST, Dr. Ong worked as a research analyst at First 5 LA and participated in the planning and dissemination of several large-scale evaluation studies, including the Los Angeles Universal Preschool Child Outcome Study (UPCOS) and the LA County Healthy Kids evaluation. 

A warm welcome to Dr. Ong.

Eva Baker Named Among Top Education Scholars

CRESST Director Eva Baker has been named among the nation’s most influential education scholars by the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy institute based in Washington, D.C.

According to an article in UCLA Today, “The annual rankings recognize  university-based academics who are contributing most substantially to public debate about schools and schooling.”

In addition to her CRESST and UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies responsibilities, Eva Baker is president of the World Education Research Association. Click here for the full UCLA Today article.

Baker Presents at International Conference on Education

In December 2011, Eva Baker, CRESST Director and President of the World Education Research Association, presented at the Taiwan Educational Research Association (TERA) International Conference on Education. 

Professor Baker's presentation, Towards Imagining a Coherent, Engaging Educational System, is available here. 

Hundreds of other CRESST presentations on a wide variety of accountability and learning topics are also available on the CRESST web site.