Cultivate + Elevate are complementary tools that help educators systematically improve students’ classroom experiences and outcomes. The tools were intentionally aligned so educators could use them together effectively. For example, Cultivate and Elevate assess the same classroom learning conditions.
Cultivate is administered twice per year, with the fall administration serving as a diagnostic assessment of students' mindsets & strategies and their views on classroom learning conditions at their school. When a school chooses to administer Cultivate, results can be disaggregated by grade level and/or subject area. When administered as part of a coaching program, individual teachers see results by class period.
Elevate is primarily designed to give teachers rapid feedback about their specific classrooms as part of an ongoing professional learning process. Teachers can administer Elevate directly to their students 2-8 times per year in short (3-8 weeks) improvement cycles and receive private, actionable feedback about how their students are experiencing classroom learning conditions. The short feedback loops and class-specific data enable teachers to test out new practices and rapidly learn which practices work best for the students in each of their classes.
Here’s a typical process:
A school or coaching program administers Cultivate to gain a broad understanding of how students experience their classes in general. Cultivate reports provide a ranked list of learning conditions so that educators can prioritize improving the conditions that are most likely to positively affect their students’ experiences, mindsets, and outcomes.
When a group of teachers (say a department, grade level team, or affinity group) decides to work in a focused way on improving classroom conditions, they form an Elevate community of practice. See How to be an Elevate Community Lead.
Then, educators utilize Elevate to incrementally improve the high-priority learning conditions identified by Cultivate. For example, educators can choose to collect student feedback on just two of the nine learning conditions offered in Cultivate & Elevate, implement recommended research-based practices, then administer Elevate again to understand if the new practices had the intended impact on students’ learning conditions.
At the end of the school year, the school or coaching program administers Cultivate again to understand changes in students' mindsets & strategies and their views on classroom learning conditions from fall to spring.
