Best Practices

Featured Assessment Principle

A high-quality system of assessments places a focus on incorporating a wide variety of assessments from the state and local levels to inform educational decisions, ideally with each assessment contributing a specific purpose and use within the coherent whole. This comprehensive array of measures not only informs accountability, but importantly  allows educators and students to inform their future instructional, learning, and studying strategies (assessment for learning) and to learn from the process of their assessment experiences (assessment as learning).

For example, a capstone project or assessments like those in the International Baccalaureate program are examples of summative assessments that are also performance-based and designed to advance teaching and student learning while providing information to students, educators, and the public. The system should elevate a focus on helping educators use data from across all of these assessments to inform teaching, student learning strategies, and continuous improvement in a timely manner, while ensuring the set of assessments also informs public accountability and systemic improvement.

Additional Resources

• Assessing Learning
• A New Era for Educational Assessment
• Performance Counts: Assessment Systems that Support High-Quality Learning
• To Assess, To Teach, To Learn: A Vision for the Future of Assessment
• Student-Centered Assessment Resources
• Student-Centered Assessment Video Suite