WINTER PARK, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Formative assessment is becoming ubiquitous in many school districts today. This has led to an increasing need for quality assessment content, particularly technology-enhanced items. To address this challenge, Performance Matters™ today announces PM Nation, the latest enhancement to the Unify assessment platform.
PM Nation, which is free to participating Performance Matters customers, is an online collaborative that allows educators to author, review, and share items and assessments with other PM Nation members across the country. Currently, PM Nation members have access to several thousand items that have been vetted by grade and subject, with new items being added and reviewed daily.
The School District of Indian River County in Florida is now rolling out the Unify assessment platform and plans to use PM Nation to enhance its formative assessment program. “Like every district, we struggle with instruction versus assessment — and sometimes there’s a disconnect between what we teach and how we assess. Unify is bridging that divide. It’s providing a platform for us to collaboratively plan for formative assessment, so we can better assess our students on our standards and gain a clearer picture of how they’re doing,” said Brian McMahon, a performance data analyst with the district.
According to McMahon, all district benchmarks will be authored, administered and analyzed through Unify. Teachers will also be able to build their own assessments using PM Nation, district, third party, and state-provided item banks, and/or by creating their own items.
“With the switch to technology-enhanced items at the state level and the push toward standards-based instruction in our district, we need another resource for assessment items that have been written, vetted and used by teachers, and that incorporate a broader array of item types,” said McMahon. “With PM Nation, we know we’re getting quality items, which will save us a lot of time and money.”
For more information, visit www.performancematters.com or call (407) 645-1800.
