Measure and learn.

Being able to assess a student population's grasp of material is key to improving education and complying with the No Child Left Behind Act's mandate for better school performance. Typically, that performance has been measured though statewide tests given late in the school year, with administrators getting the results over the summer.

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That may work for evaluating overall performance, but it doesn't do much to help the students who took the test, says Brian Blaydes, vice president, K-12 sales East for PLATO Learning, a Bloomington, Minn.-based provider of educational technology. "By the time you get the results, those students are on to the next grade, and it's too late to correct any gaps in their knowledge."

PLATO Learning is addressing that problem by offering tools for formative assessments throughout the year. To do so, the company's assessment tools work at three levels. At the individual level, assessments are embedded in courseware, allowing the system to gauge students' understanding of the skills taught in each lesson. At the school level, teachers can use results from formative assessments to determine if students have mastered the standards taught. They then can make immediate, informed instructional decisions for the students, providing additional practice or reteaching the skill in a different way to those who did not master it, or moving on to the next standard if mastery was demonstrated. Finally, at the district level, the system enables administrators to schedule benchmark assessments and use aggregated data to frequently evaluate progress toward standards mastery.

In essence, this approach gives schools a feedback loop that lets them identify and correct problems early on. Some districts, for example, now assess progress three times a year, allowing administrators to address any gaps along the way and ultimately ensure that students are ready for their state tests late in the year.

"They can adjust their instructional strategies early enough to have an impact, and they have an entire school year to intervene with a specific teacher or subgroup of students," says Blaydes. "So you're not just assessing learning. You're getting actionable information that can facilitate better learning."