Illuminate Blog
Follow our latest stories on educators, students and classroom technology
COVID-19 and Assessments: Moving from “What If?” to “What Now?”
When I picked my daughter up from school on March 2nd, her teacher was handing out packets of information about the upcoming end-of-year tests and practice questions. She talked to…
Remote Screening & Progress Monitoring 101
As schools across the U.S. work to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 by implementing virtual instruction and assessments, Illuminate has compiled resources to help educators use their current tools for…
Use the Data You Have Today to Group Students, Align Remote Resources & Plan for the Future
Finding ways to group students into meaningful cohorts to progress learning has always been a trend in education. These student groups may be based on academic, social-emotional, or behavior data. But…
Learning From A Distance? 6 Tips To Do It Well
With the situation across the country developing at a rapid pace, most schools are shifting to a virtual learning environment to accommodate their students. Some schools may have the capacity…
How Garden City Public Schools is Building an Information-Rich Comprehensive Assessment System
About Garden City Public Schools Located in Garden City, Kansas, a southwestern section of Finney county, the Garden City United School District is home to a vibrant community of over…
5 Strategies for Implementing MTSS at the Secondary Level
As we’ve noted in previous blogs, MTSS is a framework with a tiered infrastructure that uses data to help match academic and social-emotional behavior (SEB) assessment and instructional resources to…
Analyzing Your Assessment Data: Patterns of Need & Root Cause Analysis
Now that your students have taken an assessment, it’s time to start analyzing your data. But where do you start? This article will explore two data analysis processes to help…
Understanding Intensive Intervention within an MTSS Framework
Intensive intervention is an important tool that educators can use to address the learning needs of students with significant learning deficits. Often referred to as Tier 3 within a Multi-Tiered…
Supporting Advanced Learning Within a Multi-Tiered System of Supports
What is MTSS and How Does Advanced Learning Fit Within the MTSS Framework? A multi-tiered system of support, or MTSS, is a framework with a tiered infrastructure that uses data to…
Creating and Taking Action on a Data-Driven Strategic Plan
This article was co-written with Heidi Aldrich Many educators think of student success as high assessment marks, high graduation rates, and socially well-adjusted students ready to tackle whatever comes next.…