The prospect of summer evokes nostalgia for many educators and students alike. The springtime weather shift brings the first clues: freshly cut grass, warm breezes through open windows distracting us from lessons with promises of outdoor freedom. The end of a school year marks celebration time — another grade completed, principals meeting evaluation deadlines, and teachers wrapping up their time with students whose once-new faces are now familiar. For parents, it means transitioning to having children at home full-time, with summer camps and vacations on the horizon.
I hope you and your families embrace your summer traditions! Whether you’ll be taking a break, starting a new degree, or participating in meaningful professional learning, all of us at PDK International hope this summer offers you the chance to regroup, rest, and recharge.
This summer may be the best time to tell your friends and colleagues about our new membership tier, PDK Prestige. Eligible members include teachers, principals, superintendents, and other education professionals who have received “of the year” awards from their school, district, or nonprofit organization. The major benefit to Prestige members is free online access to Kappan.
As a former school leader, I witnessed the “summer slump” — that period of learning loss many students experience. Early in my career, I discovered the benefits of year-round scheduling. While challenging traditional patterns, year-round schools minimize learning loss by strategically distributing breaks throughout the year rather than concentrating them in one three-month period. Though assessments demonstrate clear benefits, implementing such schedules requires significant community cooperation and coordination.
I’m eager for your feedback on this edition’s focus on assessment. While we’ve long debated balancing instructional time with various assessment strategies, a student’s score merely signals what our next steps should be. We should use what we learn from their performance to create our prescription for maximizing instruction — providing students with the support, resources, experiences, and feedback they need to achieve mastery.
The articles in this edition of Kappan offer ideas for diversifying your assessment approaches and provide talking points about their importance in students’ educational experiences. In March, I interviewed Patrick Kelly for our podcast, There’s Power in Teaching. Patrick is a South Carolina high school teacher serving on the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the National Assessment for Educational Progress. I encourage you to check out this episode, as Patrick excellently demystifies this national assessment and its role in state and federal policy development.
I invite you to listen to our podcast and subscribe. We’ve recently interviewed inspiring students preparing to become teachers, and few things energize educators more than hearing how recent graduates plan to change the world.
Our PDK summer revolves around our annual conference — though Orlando may be a top family destination for vacationers, we’ll be hosting nearly 3,800 students and teachers at the Educators Rising National Conference! This year’s conference will be a special event as we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Educators Rising. The celebration will officially start this May, when we host a Capitol Hill reception, with a congressional resolution acknowledging our decade of impact.
At last year’s conference, we offered students the opportunity to take the Praxis Core assessment, and our students outperformed national high school averages, with one achieving a perfect score. This success reminds us how powerful intrinsic motivation can be. When students genuinely enjoy learning, set meaningful goals, and feel supported by caring adults, success follows naturally. Our movement demonstrates that engaging authentically motivated students and guiding them toward self-determined goals works. Assessments confirm that motivated students can develop remarkably quickly.
This article appears in the Summer 2025 issue of Kappan, Vol. 106, No. 7-8, pp. 79.
