Help for Districts & Schools: Implementing Balanced Assessment Systems
The National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the Center for Assessment today released Implementing Balanced Assessment Systems: A Practical Guidebook for Districts & Schools. This critical guidebook will help school and district leaders as they tackle important questions such as:
- How balanced is our local assessment system and how would we know?
- What might be out of balance with our local system of assessments, given our instructional vision?
- How could we begin to improve the balance of our local assessment system?
Written by the Center for Assessment’s Carla Evans, Caroline Wylie, Erika Landl and Scott Marion, the Guidebook builds on the 2024 NAEd volume, Reimagining Balanced Assessment Systems, which expands upon our understanding of balanced assessment systems, centering ambitious and equitable teaching and learning at the classroom level.
Taken together, the volume and Guidebook provide guidance on how to (1) foster and maintain a culture of productive assessment use to improve ambitious and equitable teaching and learning at the classroom level; (2) design policy, professional learning, and other local systems necessary to implement balanced assessment systems; and (3) implement processes to use aggregate data to continually improve the assessment system itself to better serve all students, especially those most disenfranchised.
The Guidebook describes nine threats to balanced assessment systems, practical next steps, and examples of real school districts and states trying to do this difficult and critical work.
For more information about this project, please visit the NAEd’s project website.