When an Assessment Changes, Communication Planning Matters

The goal: Build understanding before scores are released

Changes to assessments or assessment systems are rarely a surprise—in most cases, they reflect years of planning, technical review, constituent engagement, and policy discussion focused on ensuring that assessment results provide meaningful, intended information about student learning and achievement.

What can surprise constituents, however, is the impact those changes can have on student results. That’s why it’s important for communication planning to be part of the discussions about changing an assessment. Everyone affected by the test needs to know what changed, why, and what it means for them. I’ve written a guide to support education leaders in that planning; in this blog, I’ll highlight some key ideas.

Building understanding about the changes in an assessment, long before scores are released, is important to preserve trust in that assessment. When proficiency rates suddenly increase or decrease, or when reporting scales change, which prevent meaningful year-to-year comparisons, conversations can shift away from student learning to concerns about the quality and utility of the assessment. Educators, policymakers, parents, and members of the media may wonder whether standards were arbitrarily raised or lowered, whether the assessment is fair, or whether results are still trustworthy.

Plenty of Time to Plan

Many of these outcomes can be anticipated long before results are reported. State leaders, technical advisory committees (TACs) and assessment vendors often spend years considering how proposed changes may affect the interpretation of results, proficiency rates, accountability determinations, and other measures of performance. In some cases, shifts in proficiency rates are expected; in others, they reflect an intentional effort to ensure that performance standards communicate a more accurate message about student readiness and achievement.

The challenge is this: While the technical implications of assessment changes are often well understood by those designing the system, that understanding is rarely explained to educators, policymakers, families and the media before results are reported. As a result, state education agencies (SEAs) often face a flurry of questions when they release results, and must explain, quickly and to a range of audiences, the rationale and anticipated consequences of years of assessment development work. Those explanations can feel reactive and defensive rather than intentional and transparent.

Communication Throughout Design and Implementation

Every major assessment revision has a story. Decisions about standards, test design, performance expectations, and reporting are made for a reason, and are often informed by years of discussion, analysis, and constituent input. What is often missing is a deliberate effort to share that story and its anticipated implications with the audiences who will ultimately interpret and use the results. That’s a missed opportunity for improved understanding of the assessment and its results.

State leaders often discuss these implications internally throughout the development process. They ask important questions about how the changes might affect reported performance, accountability systems, trend analyses, and public perceptions. Unfortunately, those conversations often remain confined to technical advisory committee (TAC) meetings, internal discussions and implementation planning documents.

When families, advocates and other constituents are not exposed to that story, they are left to interpret changes in results without understanding the decisions that produced them. A thoughtful communication plan can proactively address this issue. In addition to supporting external communication, the planning process requires the agency to clearly articulate the rationale for the changes, the goals they are intended to achieve, and their likely implications for reporting and interpretation. This creates a shared narrative that can be used consistently across divisions within the SEA.

When communication occurs throughout the redesign process, assessment results become part of a broader narrative about improving the assessment system rather than a surprise that requires explanation. The goal is not to build agreement around every decision, but to equip a broad range of shareholders to interpret and use results appropriately.

Vendors and TACs Have an Important Role to Play

Communication planning is often viewed as the responsibility of the SEA. While communications teams play a critical role, assessment vendors and TACs can help highlight what information should be shared and when.

Vendors help states make decisions about standards alignment, blueprint revisions, reporting approaches, and standard setting. TACs provide independent guidance on the technical quality of those decisions and their implications for interpretation and use. Given their shared expertise working across a variety of states, these groups are uniquely positioned to help state identify questions that educators, families and other constituents are likely to ask when results are released, such as:

• Why can results no longer be compared across years?
• How do I interpret significant increases/decreases in proficiency rates?
• What does it mean for my student to “meet expectations”?

Rather than waiting for these questions to emerge, vendors and TACs can help state leaders anticipate potential pain points and document the rationale behind key decisions (e.g., new reporting scales, performance labels) throughout the development process. This documentation can then inform the development of communication materials, presentations, FAQs, and constituent outreach efforts.

The Communication Planning Guide

Over the years, I have seen states devote significant effort to improving their assessment systems while simultaneously struggling to defend the implications of those changes. The communication planning guide is intended to help state and district leaders—and the vendors who support them—think proactively about how assessment changes will be understood, not simply how they will be implemented.

The guide is organized around three questions:

• Who needs to know about the change and why?
• What information do different audiences need, and when do they need it?
• How should information be communicated, and by whom?

Although initially developed for statewide assessment transitions, the guide can support any change that affects how assessment results should be interpreted or used, including new standards, revised assessments, new performance standards, reporting scale changes, accountability redesign efforts, and significant changes to local assessment systems.

Assessment changes do not create controversy simply because they occur. More often, controversy emerges when the potential or intended implications of those changes have not been clearly explained in advance. When states communicate that story prior to the release of results, constituents are better prepared to focus on the conversations that matter most—what students know, what they can do, and how schools can continue to improve.