When you know what standardized assessment washback is, you can see ways that it creeps into our everyday pedagogies and narrows what kind of learning we aim to support. Even if your students have to take a standardized test at the end of the year, this doesn’t have to wash back into your instruction all year long!

Michelle Cottrell-Williams interviews Dr. Carissa McCray on how teachers can better create equitable, inclusive learning environment that assess learners holistically. Dr. McCray explains why a culturally competent education is important for everyone in our globalized world, and the all-important role assessment plays in reaching all students.

Everything in Mike McAteer’s class begins with the end in mind. But instead of focusing on the endpoint of a summative assessment, he asks the question: What do I want to read in my students’ reflections?

Join Aaron Blackwelder as he interviews Dr. Sarah Beck, Associate Professor of English Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU Steinhardt and author of the book A Think-Aloud Approach to Writing Assessment.

Education professor Paul Thomas shares why grades, tests, and rubrics detract significantly from effective teaching and actually create the problems many teachers seem to be inordinately worried about.

Aaron Blackwelder interviews Paul Thomas, Professor of Education at Furman University, Greenville SC about how grades and grading create inequities for both students and teachers.

Students need teachers to be supportive coaches, sending the message that “you’ve got this” when they run into difficulty. Sarah Beck explains why dialogic writing assessment is uniquely suited to our present challenges.

Arthur Chiaravalli interviews David Kirkland, Executive Director of The NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and The Transformation of Schools. He is the author of A Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Young Black Men and co-editor of Students Right to Their Own Language.

In this episode, Aaron Blackwelder hosts Matthew Johnson, the author of the book Flash Feedback.

Teacher educator, Karis Jones, explains how teachers can use digital spaces to encourage liberatory approaches to language in classroom discourse practices.

Sarah M. Zerwin teaches Senior Language Arts and AP Lit at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado, and author of the book Point-Less: An English Teacher’s Guide to More. You can follow her blog The Paper Graders and on twitter at @SarahMZerwin

The arts seem to have problem solving, collaboration, and creativity written into their very DNA. But can we bring this approach to the other content areas?