More Data, Less Time: Rethinking What Assessment Owes Teachers
In this episode of Teaching Matters, host Scott Titsworth talks with Sabine Wallis, General Manager of NWEA, about where K-12 assessment is headed as districts navigate academic recovery, growing skepticism about testing, and the arrival of AI in classroom tools. Wallis, who joined NWEA in December 2025 after product leadership roles at Renaissance Learning and Illuminate Education, argues that the real opportunity isn’t more assessment but better use of the data schools already collect. The conversation covers her path into K-12 education, how assessment providers can build trust through transparency, why research needs to aim beyond simply validating a product, and what genuine integration looks like from a classroom’s point of view.
Learn more by visiting NWEA: https://www.nwea.org/
24 Sept 2026
What Report Cards Were Never Built to Measure
Earlier this year, Teaching Matters talked with the founders of Abre about making school data meaningful. This episode is the other half of that story. Host Scott Titsworth talks with Dr. Karen Cheser, Superintendent of Durango School District in southwest Colorado and the 2025 EmpowerED Digital Superintendent of the Year, about what happens when a district actually puts that kind of system to work. They discuss Durango’s community-created Portrait of a Graduate, the challenge of gathering actionable evidence from students, and what the data has revealed for Durango Schools.
https://www.durangoschools.org/
22 Sept 2026
Cleared for Takeoff
Host Scott Titsworth talks with Natalie Campana, the 2025-2026 National Project Lead The Way (PLTW) Engineering Teacher of the Year, and her former student Sarah Ostovich, now an aviation major at Ohio University. A follow-up to Teaching Matters’ July 2026 conversation with PLTW’s Katie Minihan, this episode traces the mentorship that connected a Steubenville High School teacher and her student, the hands-on PLTW curriculum and dual-enrollment coursework that let Sarah arrive at college with more than ninety credit hours already earned, and what it takes to build a career in a field where women remain underrepresented.
Project Lead The Way: https://www.pltw.org
Who has been a guest on Teaching Matters
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Auditi Chakravarty
Kara Stern
Frank Cullen
Dr Katie Minihan
Alyssa Tormala
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
12,340,342
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
7 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 70 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
89
Social presence
0
YouTube
93
Engagement
32
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Scott Titsworth host the show. Published by WOUB Public Media.
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