News & Blog

You may have seen the video by now. A high school Spanish teacher in Illinois had a running joke with her students about getting Joe Jonas to comment on their social media. The deal? If they pulled it off, they would earn a pass on their final exam.

Technology-enhanced items (TEIs) are becoming a central part of state assessments, but many educators still question how students truly perform on them. This large-scale analysis from Progress Learning examines over 3 billion student responses across grades K–12 and all core subjects to better understand how TEIs impact performance,…

Alabama is implementing its first full revision of social studies standards in more than 14 years. The 2024 Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies, approved by the Alabama Board of Education on December 12,…

Missouri’s standardized testing landscape is shifting in a meaningful way, and for districts, the implications go beyond scheduling. For years, educators have raised the same concern about the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP): the data arrives too late to impact instruction. By the time…

The first few minutes of class are often treated as transition time. Students are settling in. Teachers are taking attendance. Instruction has not fully started yet. That mindset leaves valuable instructional time on the table. In Bell Ringers with Intentional Usage,…

Updated June 24th 2026 The pandemic forced schools to move fast. Within weeks, millions of students were learning on Chromebooks, tablets, and school-issued laptops, often without clear guardrails for how those devices should actually be used. Many classrooms never recalibrated once students returned. Families began to notice extended…

Oklahoma is taking a new approach to improving math outcomes across elementary grades. With the passage of the Math Achievement and Proficiency Act (SB 140), the state is applying a structured, literacy-style framework to mathematics. The goal is…

Understanding Missouri High School EOC Assessments Missouri high school End-of-Course (EOC) assessments play a central role in accountability under MSIP 6. Districts administer four core EOCs: Algebra I English II Biology Government While all four assessments impact…

If your students are sitting for state assessments this spring, there is a strong chance they will be logging in through DRC INSIGHT, a secure, web-based testing platform used by millions of K–12 students nationwide. Many schools rely on the state’s Online Tools Training (OTT) to…