Assessment

Assessment

Assessment provides crucial insight into student learning. In a well-balanced system of large-scale summative, interim/curriculum-embedded and formative assessments, leaders at each level-state, district, school and classroom-can use assessment results to support learning. We help leaders identify their highest-priority assessment uses and design systems to meet their needs.


Recent Assessment Projects

National leadership on state assessment practice

We facilitate ongoing conversations with 40-plus states on the technical and policy issues that support good practice in statewide assessment. The collaborative is based at the Council of Chief State School Officers; our facilitation is part of our longstanding partnership with CCSSO.

Through-year design

Montana wanted to make its assessments more useful for instruction. We are supporting the state in building a through-year system that yields results several times a year, with the intent to provide information for classroom teachers to gain insight into student learning before the end of the year.

21st century competencies

The International Baccalaureate explored ways to define and assess hard-to-measure competencies like creativity and ethical thinking. To support IB, we produced a series of literature reviews defining these complex skills and providing recommendations for assessing these skills.


Recent Assessment Blog Posts and Papers

Aligned to What?

This session addresses some of the toughest alignment and test design issues faced by test developers and curriculum specialists, including […]
October 10, 2003

Design Considerations For Building Out (NCLB) State Assessment Systems

This presentation examines some of the changes that have occurred with statewide assessment programs as a result of No Child […]
October 10, 2003

Variance Over Schools of School True-Score Means for Samples of Size N

This short paper provides an accurate equation for the variance over schools of school true-score means for samples of size […]
July 11, 2003

Analytic Scoring Results

This presentation, given at the 2003 Large Scale Assessment Conference, presents evidence that analytic scores of writing assessments are usually […]
June 25, 2003

Developing & Implementing Instructionally Supportive Local Assessment Systems, Part 2

High quality local assessment systems may offer great promise for truly improving teaching and learning. Yet these designs are not […]
June 24, 2003

Developing & Implementing Instructionally Supportive Local Assessment Systems, Part 1

High quality local assessment systems may offer great promise for truly improving teaching and learning. Yet these designs are not […]
June 24, 2003

Putting Large-Scale Assessment in Perspective

This paper discusses the role of large-scale assessments in a comprehensive assessment system as well as the effective and efficient […]
April 28, 2003

Local Assessment Systems That Improve Teaching and Satisfy State Accountability Requirements

This presentation summarizes the work done to develop a large group of assessment activities in English, math, science, and social […]
June 26, 2002

New Knowledge About Writing

This presentation is a summary of two studies on writing conducted for Pennsylvania. Copies of the full papers on the […]
June 26, 2002

Using Alignment Studies Proactively

This presentation at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ 2002 large-scale assessment conference discusses issues involved in using alignment […]
June 24, 2002