Student Assessment 101: A Guide for State Leaders

Assessments provide students, families, educators and administrators with a measure of what students know and how well they understand academic material. Some assessments — such as statewide summative assessments — are a significant part of state school accountability systems whereas other assessments — like kindergarten entrance assessments or literacy screeners — are used to evaluate student readiness or monitor progress. Assessments may even serve different purposes for various stakeholder groups. The intended purpose for each assessment influences its design, which informs how families, schools, districts and state leaders can use the results to identify what additional resources and supports are needed for students to thrive.

Instructional Improvement

Teachers measure student progress and mastery consistently throughout the learning process to identify student strengths and areas for improvement to inform instructional design and differentiation.

Student Readiness

Assessments measure student readiness for key transitions, such as the transition into Kindergarten, postsecondary education, military, or the workforce.

Student Mastery

Assessments measure student proficiency in academic standards and mastery of skills or competencies and identify the additional supports students may need from their school.

School Accountability and Improvement

Assessments measure student growth and achievement to inform school accountability determinations, additional resource allocation, and improvement strategies.

Students are assessed before, during and after learning to measure progress towards and ­­­mastery of standards and skills.

Diagnostic assessments measure student knowledge and skills before learning to help educators and families identify priority areas and develop appropriate approaches to support student learning (e.g., literacy screeners).

Formative assessments evaluate student progress towards educational objectives during learning, including academic standards, to inform changes to teaching and learning (e.g., unit quiz or related assignment).

Interim assessments evaluate student achievement at intervals throughout a course of study to inform instructional supports and predict student performance on state summative assessments (e.g., district- or vendor-developed benchmark assessment).

Summative assessments measure student mastery of academic standards and skills in specific content areas after learning to inform school ratings, as well as sometimes for grade promotion and course credit (e.g., statewide summative assessment or end-of-course exam).

Through-year assessments combine interim and summative assessments to create a cohesive assessment system including multiple assessments throughout and at the end of the year, which may provide additional data on in-year growth.

Students are assessed in a variety of ways, depending on the theory of action. Assessments may include multiple-choice questions, constructed (or written) responses, and relevant tasks or applications, such as science experiment demonstrations. As states look to develop innovative assessment options, performance assessments have garnered increased attention.

Performance Assessments, also referred to as competency-based assessments, allow students to demonstrate their knowledge by directly exhibiting a skill, reporting on an investigation, producing a product, or performing an activity. States are increasingly exploring the use of performance assessments during instruction, to meet graduation requirements, or for inclusion in statewide summative assessment systems. Depending on the intended use of performance assessments, comparability and reliability in scoring performance tasks create challenges for using these assessments to uncover and address inequities and require substantial time and resources to effectively implement, particularly when attempting to scale across multiple schools and districts in a state.

Assessments may also be delivered to students using various mediums, including paper and pencil or digitally, including through computer-adaptive tests, which adjust the difficulty of questions based on prior student responses to potentially provide a more precise understanding of student proficiency on standards. States may also rely on vendor-developed assessments like college entrance exams or others that are designed to align with state academic standards.

Statewide summative assessments are used to measure student progress, target interventions and supports, understand student achievement and growth and — in conjunction with other measures — report on school quality.

Identifying schools for improvement:

• School Ratings are used to categorize schools within a state accountability system. States take varying approaches to rating schools, which range from descriptive rating categories to letter grades or star ratings to communicate a school’s performance on multiple measures.
  
  
• Identification Criteria determine which schools are eligible for improvement supports by both state and federal policy. These are schools with the lowest school ratings in the state, comparatively low high school graduation rates, or schools with one or more student groups with low performance rates.
  
  
• Weighting refers to how much individual accountability indicators count toward the final school rating determination. For example, achievement and growth on summative assessments are typically weighted between 20% and 60% respectively in state accountability systems.
  
  
• Accountability Timelines and Exit Criteria are outlined in federal law with substantial state flexibility to determine when schools are identified for support and improvement, how long a school has to improve and what improvements in school performance are required to make before they exit identified status.

Understanding Student Achievement:

• Cut or Threshold Scores are the scores students must achieve to reach a particular performance level. Where cut scores are set determines students’ performance level category, which has implications on school accountability ratings as well as teacher evaluation scores and other key decisions.
  
  
• Performance level descriptors describe what students know and are able to do at each performance level and may elevate student strengths. These descriptors are directly connected to cut scores and help translate assessment results for key stakeholders. They may also be associated with school-based supports for students performing below expectations on certain competencies.
  
  
• Growth Measures include various approaches to calculating student progress on statewide summative assessments from one year to the next. States measure growth using normative measures such as value-added models and student-growth percentiles that compare student growth to the growth of students with similar levels of academic achievement and expectations based on past performance, and criterion measures, such as value tables, growth-to-standard and gain-scores that measure growth against grade level proficiency as defined by state cut scores.

Reporting on Student Achievement

• Individual score reports give every student and their family a summary of their performance on the state summative assessment, providing information on what the student knows and can do in relation to grade-level standards, and what additional supports they may need from their school.
  
  
• School and District Report Cardspresent school and district accountability information to policymakers and the public. Federal law requires this data be published and disaggregated by student group. These report cards are often found in an online dashboard format. Report cards may also provide valuable information beyond achievement and growth — including school discipline and attendance data, school climate survey results, teacher qualifications and graduation rates — and therefore provide families, communities, and state and district leaders with a broader picture of school quality. Despite the value of report cards, data transparency varies nationally as some states don’t meet these requirements.

A high-quality assessment supports a meaningful understanding of student performance and provides high quality data to education stakeholders.

Assessment Design

• Alignment refers to how well tests align with other key aspects of a student’s education experience — especially state grade-level content standards. For tests to be useful for intended purposes , they may be designed to align with the state standards, curricula, instructional materials and teacher content delivery.
  
  
• Validity of a test refers to the degree to which a test accurately measures what it is intended to measure. If a test is valid, it accurately measures the skills and knowledge it is intended to measure.
  
  
• Reliability of a test refers to the degree to which results are consistent for the test taker across multiple attempts in similar conditions.
  
  
• Comparability is the ability for assessment results for individual students and student groups to be considered accurate measures of performance and meaningfully compared to other students or student groups. An assessment's comparability is directly connected to its validity and reliability.
  
  
• Peer review refers to the process developed and administered by the U.S. Department of Education to ensure state assessment systems comply with standards outlined in federal law. States may use alternative peer review processes for assessments outside of those used for federal accountability purposes.