Research and Validation 2020-2025

Students participating in the Multitudes literacy assessment platform
 

Representing California

Multitudes is built with and for California students. Our carefully selected sample allows us to refine the sensitivity and specificity of our tools and to conduct bias analyses to ensure fairness and equity.

Multitudes research was conducted by locally based teams in four remote hubs across the state, bringing both urban and rural school communities into our validation study.

California Department of Education Fingertip Facts 

Map illustrating Multitudes research locations across California

Centering Multilingual Learners

Every child deserves fair and unbiased instruction and assessment. In California, about 19% of elementary public-school students are identified as English Learners, and more than 80% of those students speak Spanish as their primary language.

Multitudes is dedicated to a culturally responsive approach that considers language proficiency and language variation during measure development, validation, and analysis.

We aim to recognize children who may be at risk of learning difficulties without overidentifying those who are still developing language proficiency.

Students participating in multilingual literacy learning activities

Innovation Cycle

Multitudes research guides implementation by continuously improving the process. Our longitudinal study, now in its fifth year, allows us to refine the platform as we learn more about students, their growth, and their learning contexts.

Our aim is a more precise, efficient, and flexible tool that serves both monolingual and multilingual learners in varied educational settings fairly and accurately.

The flexibility of the digital Multitudes platform facilitates seamless integration of new neuroscience discoveries and emerging tools and technology.

Areas of expansion include mathematics, social-emotional domains, new languages, language-agnostic measures, and progress monitoring.

Illustration showing the Multitudes research and innovation cycle

Multitudes Development and Implementation

Timeline showing the development and implementation of the Multitudes platform