Using curriculum- and GPF-aligned assessments to drive effective classroom practices in Latin America: Examples from Paraguay

• In Event: Assessing Foundational Skill Proficiency Linked to International Standards

Proposal

The Leadership for Change in Education Program, a three-year USAID-funded program implemented by Teach For All and partners in Paraguay, Ecuador, and Colombia, developed a Student Learning Assessment Item Bank to provide the program with a mechanism to measure student learning outcomes in academic (math, reading) and non-academic (socio-emotional learning) domains. Ensena por Paraguay (ExP), which recruits, supports, and trains professionals to teach in under-resourced communities for two years, was one of the partner organizations to implement the item bank. To date, ExP has administered the item bank to 898 students in grades 4-6 during the 2022 and 2023 school years to gather valuable data on student learning growth in math, reading, and social emotional skills.

This presentation will first highlight the results of the item bank implementation in Paraguay with two cohorts of students, including a summary of learning growth from the start to the end of the school year. Next, we will explain how ExP conducted an internal “pause and reflect” process to analyze results, gather classroom best practices associated with higher growth in student learning, and identify groups of students who suffer from disadvantages. These evidence-based reflections and learning processes are local adaptations of the Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA) cycle. This includes sharing how the data was used to diagnose student achievement levels by key disaggregates gender, language, competency and area) and find gaps, trends, and inequities that can be addressed at the classroom level.

Finally, we share the various strategies used to support teachers directly in the analysis and use of data to make classroom level decisions with the aim to develop a “data-driven” mindset and skills in interpreting assessment data and assigning adequate classroom practices to ensure all students learn. We will share examples of specific success stories, including teachers who introduced new strategies and abandoned ineffective ones, in response to their classroom data from the item bank. We will conclude with a summary of ExP’s future plans and recommendations for how the data can be used to inform instruction.

Authors

• Alessandra Arza, Enseña por Paraguay

• Claudia Gonzalez Sarubbi, Enseña por Paraguay