Assessing for Deeper Learning
Measuring student readiness for postsecondary education, career, and life requires assessments that go beyond content knowledge and enable students to demonstrate deeper learning skills. No single assessment or piece of student work can capture the array of student knowledge and skills needed for success, however, a system of assessments can provide information about what students know and can do.
A high-quality system of assessments measures student mastery of deeper learning skills and academic content knowledge by combining one or more of the following assessment styles:
- Performance items or tasks as part of traditional “sit-down” tests;
- Curriculum-embedded tasks carried out in the classroom during the school year;
- Portfolios or collections of evidence that display a broad set of competencies;
- A combination of traditional sit-down tests, curriculum-embedded tasks, and portfolios and exhibitions leading to a student defense.
Assessment systems can empower…
Teachers and Leaders
Teachers and Leaders
To make informed decisions on instruction, learning strategies, and support for each individual student.
Students and Families
Students and Families
To advance students’ own learning and help families make the best decisions to support their child’s educational trajectory towards success in college, career, and life.
Policymakers and Stakeholders
Policymakers and Stakeholders
To identify and advocate for district-, state-, or nation-wide policies and programs that are advancing student outcomes.
State and district leaders at the forefront of designing, implementing, and overseeing assessment efforts can use these ten principles as guidance as they evolve the current array of assessments into a high-quality system of assessments.
A high-quality system of assessments should …
ONE
Capture the array of knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed for college and career readiness (i.e., deeper learning)
ONE: Capture the array of knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed for college and career readiness (i.e., deeper learning)
A high-quality system of assessments should be anchored in and assess students’ deeper-learning knowledge, skills, and behaviors necessary for college, career, and civic readiness. These include the ability to master core academic content, think critically and solve complex problems, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, learn how to learn, and develop academic mindsets. Without assessments of these applied knowledge, skills, and behaviors, there is a risk that they will not be valued or explicitly taught in the classroom; and that students, educators, and parents lack information on whether students are on track to succeed in college and careers.
Academic assessments should be aligned to a state’s rigorous standards for college and career readiness and should also go beyond mathematics and English/language arts to measure other important knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed for success in college, careers, and life. A high-quality system of assessments should prioritize performance assessments and projects to capture deeper-learning outcomes in a robust way.
Resources
Creating Systems of Assessment for Deeper Learning
Accountability and the Federal Role: A Third Way on ESEA
The Why, What, Where, and How of Deeper Learning in American Secondary School
Student-Centered Assessment Resources
Student-Centered Assessment Video Suite
Teachers at Work—Six Exemplars of Everyday Practice: The Student at the Center Series
Equal Opportunity for Deeper Learning
The Implications of Deeper Learning for Adolescent Immigrants and English Language Learners
How School Districts Can Support Deeper Learning: The Need for Performance Alignment
Measuring Deeper Learning: New Directions in Formative Assessment
Five Elements for Assessment Design and Use to Support Student Autonomy
TWO
Balance assessment of learning with assessment for and as learning through a comprehensive set of tasks and measures
TWO: Balance assessment of learning with assessment for and as learning through a comprehensive set of tasks and measures
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.
Resources
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
Measuring Deeper Learning: New Directions in Formative Assessment
THREE
Advance equity and be inclusive of and accessible to all students
THREE: Advance equity and be inclusive of and accessible to all students
At the school and district levels, a high-quality system of assessments should advance equity by providing data that highlights learning outcomes and by providing learning experiences and information that support high-quality, college- and career-ready teaching and learning for each and every student and group of students. Efforts to embed equity in systems of assessment should embody broader systemic efforts to disrupt patterns of inequity, bias, and exclusion in our education systems while advancing more student-centered learning approaches. The array of data produced should include some information on college and career readiness that is comparable, valid, and reliable statewide, so that stakeholders have a sense of student learning across schools and districts and across groups of students.
Each assessment within a high-quality system—and the totality of the assessments within that system—should be aligned to college and career readiness, and inclusive of and accessible to all students, including students with disabilities and English language learners. Assessments should be designed to allow for accommodations for students with disabilities and English learners, be designed in a way that incorporates the principles of Universal Design for Learning, and should maintain high standards for all students.
Assessments should be fair, as outlined in The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education. Alternate assessments aligned to alternate achievement standards should only be administered where necessary and appropriate.
Additionally, knowledge, skills, and behaviors assessed should be those that can be taught and mastered in the classroom so that assessments do not presuppose students coming to school with prior knowledge from particular contexts.
Resources
The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing
Accountability for College and Career Readiness: Developing a New Paradigm
Ensuring and Evaluating Assessment Quality for Innovative Assessment and Accountability Systems
Deeper Learning for Students with Disabilities
Equal Opportunity for Deeper Learning
The Implications of Deeper Learning for Adolescent Immigrants and English Language Learners
Redesigning Assessment Systems: Emerging Lessons from Three States
Five Elements for Assessment Design and Use to Support Student Autonomy
FOUR
Build educator and school capacity for designing and using assessments
FOUR: Build educator and school capacity for designing and using assessments
A high-quality system of assessments should be accompanied by efforts to build the capacity and resources needed to support the shift to a new system of assessments, which includes the work that teachers do every day to assess student learning. The system should also ensure that teachers and leaders are prepared with the tools, knowledge, and skills to develop, administer, and score assessments (where appropriate) and use information from the various assessments in the system.
Teachers must also have opportunities to develop the skills to design meaningful assessment experiences—both formative and summative—so that when used together, educators, parents, schools, and districts have the complete set of information they need to support student learning. Finally, as teachers build these skills, tools, and practices, they should have the support of their school and district to take the time and training needed to become skilled in new assessment practices, and the culture should encourage some risk-taking and innovation in this area.
These professional learning opportunities and tools are not standalone trainings but are built into the school culture, structure, and routines, enabling and empowering teams of educators (including teachers, principals, and other educators) to develop and use quality assessments to support teaching and leading for deeper learning outcomes. At the same time, students should be intentionally prepared for shifts in assessment practices to ensure that they are engaged and increasingly comfortable with new assessment formats that elevate deeper learning.
Resources
A Supporting State Policy Framework for Next Generation Assessment Systems
Innovation in Action: State Pathways for Advancing Student-Centered Learning
Student-Centered Assessment Resources
Student-Centered Assessment Video Suite
Teachers at Work—Six Exemplars of Everyday Practice: The Student at the Center Series
Equal Opportunity for Deeper Learning
How School Districts Can Support Deeper Learning: The Need for Performance Alignment
Redesigning Assessment Systems: Emerging Lessons from Three States
School Quality Reviews: Promoting Accountability for Deeper Learning
FIVE
Align assessments to support learning and avoid duplication of testing
FIVE: Align assessments to support learning and avoid duplication of testing
A high-quality system of assessments should be as efficient as possible for teachers and students, while recognizing the critical role that a variety of assessments play in a quality education system. Assessments should be organized around a theory of action that efficiently captures and encourages the full array of college- and career-ready knowledge, skills, and behaviors. The goal should not be to minimize time on testing solely for the sake of time—which could lead to eliminating some of the most important indicators of student learning, such as performance assessments. Instead, those selecting, designing, and aligning assessments should ensure that the system measures the highest-value knowledge, skills, and behaviors, such as deeper learning skills, and should ensure coherence among those assessments, while eliminating any duplicative assessments.
For example, curriculum-embedded performance assessments, such as extended tasks, can help align and maximize assessment experiences because students and educators experience them as instructional time, and yet they are designed and scored to provide reliable disaggregated information on student learning and system performance. Audits of the system of assessments at the state, local, and school levels can help provide an initial check of what is presently in place, and help eliminate assessments that are poorly aligned, low-quality, or duplicative, in order to minimize testing time and maximize the use of assessment for learning. Ongoing communication mechanisms are needed to ensure that schools, districts, and states are coordinating around what information is being collected from assessments in the system.
Resources
Not as Easy as It Sounds: Designing a Balanced Assessment System
Performance Counts: Assessment Systems that Support High-Quality Learning
Accountability for College and Career Readiness: Developing a New Paradigm
Teachers at Work—Six Exemplars of Everyday Practice: The Student at the Center Series
How School Districts Can Support Deeper Learning: The Need for Performance Alignment
SIX
Convey clear, coherent, and continuous data on student learning
SIX: Convey clear, coherent, and continuous data on student learning
Starting from the principles outlined in Knowing What Students Know, a high-quality system of assessments should enable complete, coherent, continuous, and clear pictures of student and school progress to college and career readiness, in a way that data from individual assessments are often found lacking. To demonstrate this coherence, assessments should align with curriculum and instruction (horizontal coherence) so that assessment results are in alignment with expectations and what students are being taught.
Assessments should also align with each other within the system, so that formative assessments are coherent with summative and any other assessments, and so that, up and down the levels of classroom, school, district, and state assessments, the results provide a coherent picture (vertical coherence). Additionally, the assessment system should provide a picture of student learning over time (continuity), incorporating student learning progressions into the design of assessments across grade levels.
Data tools built to accompany the system of assessments should be tailored to the needs of different data users, such as students, parents, teachers, community leaders, and policymakers, for interpreting assessment data and identifying needed educational changes as a result of the data. These data should capture progress on mastering the variety of knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed for college and career readiness, and assessment data should be disaggregated by groups of students to the maximum extent possible for transparency.
High-quality information from the system of assessments should be timely, accessible, and clear for educators, students, families, schools, districts, and other stakeholders to support high-quality instructional shifts and engagement in the improvement process. This means that the various parts of an assessment system must work together across system levels. State and local data systems and data dashboards should also be updated to capture and display a fuller array of college- and career-readiness indicators.
Resources
Performance Counts: Assessment Systems that Support High-Quality Learning
To Assess, To Teach, To Learn: A Vision for the Future of Assessment
Teachers at Work—Six Exemplars of Everyday Practice: The Student at the Center Series
How School Districts Can Support Deeper Learning: The Need for Performance Alignment
SEVEN
Include meaningful, ongoing input and collaboration from local communities and diverse stakeholders in the development and continuous improvement of the system
SEVEN: Include meaningful, ongoing input and collaboration from local communities and diverse stakeholders in the development and continuous improvement of the system
A high-quality system of assessments should be developed and continuously improved with robust stakeholder engagement and clear communication to ensure that key users like educators, students, parents, employers, postsecondary institutions, and community leaders understand, find value in, and support the system of assessments. Engagement should include gaining input on how information from assessments can be shared in the most accessible and helpful way, as well as discussion of how assessments are used in an ongoing manner as part of the teaching and learning process.
For example, audits of an assessment system can help key users of assessment data and stakeholders understand the types of information contributed by each assessment, whether there is good alignment to college and career readiness and alignment among assessments, whether there is duplication between assessments, whether there is an imbalance between formative and summative assessment, and other characteristics across a system. This process can prepare communities and stakeholders to productively engage in public conversations about a system of assessments.
Resources
Creating Systems of Assessment for Deeper Learning
Criteria for Procuring and Evaluating High-Quality Assessments
Accountability for College and Career Readiness: Developing a New Paradigm
Equal Opportunity for Deeper Learning
Redesigning Assessment Systems: Emerging Lessons from Three States
EIGHT
Encourage cycles of review, calibration, and continuous improvement of assessments individually and as a collective system
EIGHT: Encourage cycles of review, calibration, and continuous improvement of assessments individually and as a collective system
A high-quality system of assessments should include mechanisms to pilot and evaluate innovative assessments and then incorporate and continuously improve those that capture and reflect the deeper-learning skills needed for college and career readiness and more student-centered learning. This includes locally determined assessments aligned to college and career readiness—which often allow more educator and student input into design for increased instructional relevance, buy-in, and sustainability; and assessments that allow students to personalize their learning and show mastery in a way that best reflects this personalization, such as competency-based performance assessments.
States, districts, and schools should collaborate on and implement strong continuous improvement mechanisms to help ensure changes in assessments are serving their intended purposes, and that successful assessment innovations that advance equity spread and scale while weak ones are quickly abandoned. Innovations and changes should be rolled out over time, to ensure there is time to continuously improve them along the way.
Resources
Criteria for Procuring and Evaluating High-Quality Assessments
Student-Centered Assessment Resources
Student-Centered Assessment Video Suite
Teachers at Work—Six Exemplars of Everyday Practice: The Student at the Center Series
Equal Opportunity for Deeper Learning
School Quality Reviews: Promoting Accountability for Deeper Learning
NINE
Employ high standards of coherence, validity, reliability, and fairness
NINE: Employ high standards of coherence, validity, reliability, and fairness
A high-quality system of assessments should be aligned with a state, district, or community’s clear theory of action around preparing students for college and career readiness. It should employ high standards of validity, reliability, and fairness for all students for each assessment contingent on the use of the specific assessment (e.g. formative vs. summative), aligned with the theory of action for that system. The system should also demonstrate coherence among the assessments, and each assessment should be used in a manner consistent with its intended purpose. Quality and validity take different forms depending on the purpose and use of the assessment.
Taken as a whole, the system of assessments should be guided by the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. The Standards make clear that test scores should not be used alone for consequential purposes, and when a system of multiple assessment points is aggregated together, the resulting data about student performance provide a more accurate picture when high-stakes decisions are being made.
Additionally, because processes for certifying the validity and reliability of a full system of assessment are still being developed and are continuously evolving, states, districts, and schools should examine the coherence of the system across all assessments in addition to the validity, reliability, and fairness of individual assessments.
Resources
The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing
Not as Easy as It Sounds: Designing a Balanced Assessment System
Performance Counts: Assessment Systems that Support High-Quality Learning
To Assess, To Teach, To Learn: A Vision for the Future of Assessment
A Framework for Conceptualizing and Evaluating the Validity of Instructionally Relevant Assessments
TEN
Protect data privacy
TEN: Protect data privacy
High-quality student data are critical to empowering students, families, educators, and communities to learn more about educational effectiveness. Data collected through assessments must be transparent and as meaningful as possible for stakeholders in order to spur advances in educational quality and college and career readiness.
At the same time, those data must be protected and secure. Data and privacy policies and practices should meet the criteria outlined in the Student Data Principles developed by the Data Quality Campaign and thirty-three other organizations, and should continually evolve to meet current assessment and data technology capabilities.
Resources
10 Foundational Principles for Using and Safeguarding Students’ Personal Information
10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING A HIGH-QUALITY SYSTEM OF ASSESSMENTS
10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING A HIGH-QUALITY SYSTEM OF ASSESSMENTSAssessment Resources