In 2019-2020, the requirement to administer state summative assessments was waived for all states. In the absence of this data, many states and school districts leaned on commercial interim assessment data to inform programmatic and instructional decisions to a greater extent than they had in the past.

Juan D’Brot and the Center are pleased to host this post prepared by Juan with contributions from his colleagues on the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation: Brad Watts, Julie Morrison, and Jennifer Merriman. The JCSEE's mission is to develop and promote standards for conducting high-quality evaluations through the use of the Program Evaluation Standards.

In the seacoast region of New Hampshire, we are enjoying the kind of crisp early autumn temps that might call for a light sweater, and the foliage reveals just a hint of the color that draws ‘leaf peepers’ to the region each year. But it wasn’t just the postcard-perfect scene that drew more than 80 education and assessment leaders from around the country to Portsmouth on September 26-27, 2019. The Center’s annual Reidy Interactive Lecture Series (RILS) offered an opportunity for those assembled to learn and contribute ide

Assessments are the most powerful and useful when designed intentionally for particular purposes – especially when it comes to interim assessments.  

This week, the Center team gathers in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with state and local educators, assessment specialists, industry leaders, and old and new friends for our 21^st annual Reidy Interactive Lecture Series (RILS). The topic of RILS this year and the goal for our two days together is to improve the selection, use, and evaluation of interim assessments by helping states and districts make better-informed decisions about the appropriateness and utility of different interim assessments options.

This is the sixth in a series of CenterLine posts by our 2019 summer interns and their Center mentors based on their project and the assessment and accountability issues they addressed this summer. Calvary Diggs from the University of Minnesota worked with Nathan Dadey on a literature review on the use and effectiveness of interim assessments.

It may sound innovative to claim that commercial interim assessments support instruction, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.