Practitioner Perspectives

Sonja Brookins-Santelises

Chief Academic Officer, Baltimore City Public Schools

In this video interview, Dr. Brookins-Santelises explains Baltimore City Public School District's aim to provide more detailed information to all teachers about the reading profiles of students (not limiting such inventories to early grades). She mentions that since the district already emphasized knowing each student well as a learner, the RISE (now Capti Assess) was accepted readily as an ideal tool for middle school and high schools to assess adolescent readers. She goes on to provide pointers about communicating to all teachers about the components of literacy and shares her approach to connecting content-area teachers in middle school and high school directly to literacy issues that are relevant to their day-to-day work. Finally, she discusses the district's plan for using the data to plan scheduling, professional development, and foster good transitions to high school from middle school.

Why the RISE (now Capti Assess) is right for Baltimore

Kelley Curley

Literacy Coach, Boston Public Schools

In this video interview, Ms. Curley shares that her state's standardized tests lack detail about how and why struggling readers at her school struggle. She goes on to mention that the RISE (now Capti Assess) provides a lot of data in a short amount of time that is very helpful. At her school, teachers in classes other than reading especially benefited from the results as it gave them new perspectives on reading, reading instruction, and even behaviors of particular students that were triggered, perhaps, by the frustrations with the assigned work.

How the RISE (now Capti Assess) supports our school's literacy goals

Sara Henschell

Teacher, Baltimore City Public Schools

In this video interview, Ms. Henschell explains that the RISE (now Capti Assess) provides a helpful "breakdown" for teachers as to why particular students are not reading proficiently and also helps teachers understand that the issues related to the development of reading in adolescents are complex. She mentions that high school teachers like her often focus primarily on providing content to students in engaging ways, but focus less on helping students learn how to process this content. Her experience in Baltimore, where the assessment was administered city-wide, was that the data were returned to her in a timely way and that the teachers at her high school used the data with the help of an on-site literacy coach.

How the RISE (now Capti Assess) helps me support my students