InFormative

We know that districts across North America receive an overwhelming amount of data everyday. You are faced with the challenges of organizing, analyzing and reporting on this data in order to advance student achievement through personalized learning.

That's why our phased approach to implementation ensures your system is up and running and that you have a thorough understanding of your data and the variables that affect student performance.

Find out more about Pearson Inform’s Professional Consulting Services.
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Our release in May (Pearson Inform 4.1) now includes additional reports and expanded capabilities that make it easier for K-12 educators to identify groups of students that need intervention, plan improvement strategies, and monitor student progress.

Essentially more access to information to determine the best educational path for your students.

Find out more about this release.

Pearson Assessments recently introduced an enhanced version of its award winning Prosper™ assessment system software. Prosper was introduced in 2004 to provide teachers with a more efficient means of creating, delivering and scoring their classroom tests, as well as provide detailed reports that help guide instruction by identifying areas for improvement. The new Local Area Network (LAN) version of Prosper makes it even easier for educators to share the tests they have authored, compare test results and immediately access their information from virtually any PC in the building.

Yes, another award winning product from Pearson, but why should you care? If you are an educator that frequently creates and scores tests to determine if the students “get it”, Prosper will save you time and provide a level of detail that is typically only available on district benchmark tests.

Time to teach and immediate feedback – not a bad combination! Click here to learn more, or visit us at booth 1546 at the NECC conference in Atlanta, GA June 24th – 27th.

Is classroom assessment really that important? Inside the Black Box is a well known article by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam on the topic that is worth reading.

The PASeries team is at it again. This month you will be able to find us at the Lexile National Reading Conference in Orlando and NECC in Atlanta.

The Lexile conference will run June 18-20 at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Lake Buena Vista Florida.

Be sure to catch my session Bridging the Gap between Assessment and Instruction with Lexiles and Quantiles on Monday, June 18th at 3:00. I'll present some methods of using Students' PASeries score data to provide differentiated instruction.

We will also be at NECC in Atlanta this year June 24th-27th at the Georgia World Congress Center. Stop by the Pearson Assessments booth (booth 1546) to learn more about PASeries and all of our formative assessment solutions.

What do you get when you add an award winning scientifically-based formative assessment, (PASeries Reading!) + lexile score on your individual student reports + reading interests? Answer = reading achievement success!

Keep the momentum of learning for your students by encouraging participation in summer reading programs. If you report the Lexile score on your state summative assessments, apply your student's interests' through reading and watch your child's reading comprehension and achievement increase.

To view a study of the Lexile score and interest in reading level to improve student reading achievement, Stop Summer Academic Loss: An Education Policy Priority by Malbert Smith, III, Ph.D., President, and Dee Brewer, States and Studies Project Manager, MetaMetrics, Inc.

Announced today via the business wire that our own PASeries® Reading is the winner of a 2007 Best Educational Software "(BESSIE)" Award. PASeries Reading was honored as best language arts product in the "Early Elementary" category.

Just a reminder of what PASeries Reading does: uses the industry-standard scientific Lexile Framework® for Reading. Lexiles® provide a common scale for matching reader ability and text difficulty, allowing easy monitoring of student progress. The reading formative assessments include screener, progress and diagnostic tests, focusing on overall ability as well as specific skills in reading.

Going to IRA next week in Toronto? Be sure to visit the Pearson Assessments booth (booth 1500) to learn all about PASeries Reading and its use of Lexiles to aid in student improvement.

IRA is a great venue for us to launch our new suite of PASereis Reading diagnostic tests that we completed last week. I will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about the PASeries Reading program, so be sure to stop by.

Don’t forget you passport, and enjoy the convention.

The PASeries team has now completed production of the Reading Diagnostic tests. 56 new diagnostic tests are now available to PASeries Reading users at no additional charge. The tests cover Lexile levels 100-1000 and allow for in-depth investigation in the following areas:

Elementary School Comprehension 1

Elementary School Comprehension 2

Elementary School Vocabulary and Phonics

Elementary School Literary Analysis

Middle School Comprehension 1

Middle School Comprehension 2

Middle School Vocabulary

Middle School Literary Analysis

The new diagnostics cover a multitude of specific skill areas such as: Figurative Language and Other Literary Devices; Homophones, Homographs, and Multiple-meaning Words; Main Ideas and Supporting Details; Literary Techniques; and many more.

A new Reading Diagnostic Teacher’s Guide is also available in the Reading Resouces area of the Resource Library that fully details the skill areas covered.

Have any suggestions for improving PASeries? Send them to PASeries@ pearson.com. The new Reading Diagnostic tests are the direct result of customer feedback.

Today we are releasing another set of reading diagnostic tests. We are releasing the Middle School Comprehension 2 tests. This adds to our eloementary and middle school Comprehension 1 tests and elementary school Comprehension 2 tests.

The Comprehension 1 tests cover:

Author’s Purpose, Point of View, and Fact/Opinion
Literal Comprehension
Summarize
Cause and Effect
Graphic Organizers and Story Sequence

The Comprehension 2 tests cover:

Main Ideas
Drawing Conclusions, Make Inferences, and Make Predictions
Maps, Charts, and Diagrams
Compare and Contrast
Vocabulary in Context

In the upcoming weeks we will be releasing more diagnostics in Phonics and Grammar, Grammar, and Literary Analysis. Check back here for updates.