Commentary

Building Blocks for a Brighter Future: How a Kindergarten Program Prepared Liberian Children for School, Even During COVID

Tue, 09/07/2021 - 22:40 By

Entering first grade ready to learn takes more than a book and a pencil and the enthusiasm every young child brings to learning. To be better prepared for school, it helps for a child to have acquired certain basic, foundational skills.[1] Let’s look specifically at reading. When young Joy walks into her first-grade classroom on that momentous first day of school, what skills does her teacher hope she brings with her?

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Lessons that “Stick” – How Technology Can Support Refugee Learning

Fri, 09/03/2021 - 18:21 By

Blogs, commentaries, and reports on education technology (EdTech) topics so often highlight the “rapidly changing” nature of technology. More often than not, this is framed as a challenge or obstacle. There are technologies and EdTech efforts, however, that stand the test of time and continue to be relevant for many years.

The 2015-2017 Project Reconnect is one such effort.

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Building National Assessment Systems That Prioritize Learning and Adaptation

Wed, 09/01/2021 - 17:28 By

Assessment often gets a bad rap. Education stakeholders worry that teachers are teaching to the test rather than teaching to ensure that students have the skills they need to be successful in the world. They also worry that assessments sometimes get used for the wrong purposes—to punish low-performing schools or teachers, for instance—or don’t get used at all, wasting scarce resources. However, when used right—to inform instruction—assessments are absolutely critical. In low-income countries, the lack of systematic large-scale assessments has often meant that governments and other stakeholders do not have a clear picture of learning gaps, which handicaps efforts to address those gaps.

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Where are they Now? Considerations for (and Challenges to) Promoting Assessment Informed Instruction in the Classroom

Fri, 08/27/2021 - 14:53 By

Imagine you’re the fleet manager for a logistics company. You know the exact destination for each of your trucks, and when they need to make their deliveries. You also know what region of the country the trucks are departing from, but you’re not sure what city they’re in, or in which direction they are pointed. What’s more: There are 50 of these trucks, all parked in different, unknown intersections.

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