Characteristics of High-Quality Assessment in Education

Assessment is one of the most critical parts of education. Yet with so many assessments available, it can be a tough task to figure out where to start. The good news is that high-quality assessments share a common purpose: providing educators with results they can use to confidently make instructional decisions that drive better learning outcomes. In this article, we break down what makes an assessment truly high-quality and how to put that knowledge to work, focusing on summative assessments and, especially, interim assessments.

What assessments are out there?

Assessments generally exist on a spectrum, from formative assessments to summative assessments. Formative assessments are brief checkups used to monitor and evaluate students’ progress during the course of their learning, and summative assessments measure what students have learned at the end of an instructional period. As explained in our guide to the different types of assessment in education, summative assessments are not designed to inform day-to-day instruction. Instead, they are primarily used to evaluate whether students have mastered a predefined set of learning goals or standards, typically at the end of a unit, course, or year.

Interim assessments occupy a middle ground between formative and summative assessment in terms of how they’re used to guide learning. Like summative assessments, interim assessments are standardized and administered at scale, but they are given periodically throughout the year. That way, educators have an earlier view into student progress and an opportunity to adjust instruction before the end of an instructional period—making interim assessments useful in both summative and formative contexts. To learn more, explore what interim assessments are and how they work.

What is a high-quality assessment in education?

High-quality assessment in education is any assessment that delivers accurate, reliable data educators can use to improve instruction. The challenge for education leaders is that not all assessments are created equal. When assessments produce data that’s unreliable or difficult to interpret, teachers may not know how to act on that data. But with the right kind of assessment, the results can make a significant difference for all stakeholders, from school leaders to teachers to students to families.

The importance of high-quality assessment in the classroom

Every teacher and administrator must look at assessment over the course of the year as an ongoing process that informs everything from lesson planning to long-term resource allocation. Accurate assessment data drives instruction by:

Illuminating learning areas for growth

Students learn at different paces and in different ways. Additionally, research shows that academic growth patterns vary widely across schools and communities. High-quality assessment provides clear insight into every student’s relative area of strength and improvement, helping educators tailor instruction to accelerate growth where it is most needed.

Enabling personalized instruction

High-quality assessment in the classroom gives teachers the data they need to design learning pathways and make informed grouping decisions tailored to students’ individual needs. When students are thoughtfully placed in small groups, they get to develop collaboration skills, engage with peers, and become more confident learners. Personalized instruction not only supports striving students but also gives more advanced students the opportunities they need to reach their potential.

Supporting decision-making and resource allocation

While teachers use assessment data to make instructional decisions at the classroom or individual student level, building and district leaders rely on assessment data to determine staffing needs, allocate additional resources, and review progress toward grade-level proficiency.

Principles and characteristics of high-quality assessment

High-quality assessments share several defining features. The most important characteristics of high-quality assessments are:

• Aligned to curriculum. Every assessment should be explicitly designed for a specific purpose, and its results should present an opportunity to optimize student learning. Assessments should be aligned with curriculum and instruction, making them well integrated into your overall strategy.
• Valid and reliable. A high-quality assessment is developed by researchers and psychometricians and prioritizes validity (measuring what it intends to measure) and reliability (consistently producing accurate estimates).
• Able to predict proficiency. For interim assessments specifically, a high-quality assessment should inform how students are likely to do on state summative assessments. Look for assessment providers that regularly conduct linking studies between their tests and state tests to know if an assessment has strong predictive powers.
• Efficient and respectful of instructional time. Over-testing can lead to burnout and waste instructional time. Therefore, it’s critical to find high-quality assessments that leverage smart design and technology to support the work of educators at every level with as few testing events as possible to get the data you need.

Criteria for high-quality assessment

While the principles above establish what assessments should achieve, specific criteria help you evaluate how well they deliver. Criteria for high-quality assessment include:

• Consistent scoring framework. From year to year, the assessment should remain consistent in difficulty and scope so that you can draw accurate comparisons. Assessments with regularly updated, nationally representative norms give you a more accurate picture of how students compare to peers who have received a similar amount of instruction.
• Robust and varied item pools. Look for assessments with large, well-developed item banks that reduce question repetition and include items at varying depths of knowledge, including higher-order thinking tasks that go beyond basic multiple choice.
• Field validation. An assessment might work in theory, but how well does it work in the real world? What kind of results have other districts seen? Assessments should be field-tested, continually refined over time, and proven to yield results.
• Ease of use. The look, feel, and accessibility of a learning assessment go a long way toward helping students stick with it and take the time to give meaningful answers.
• Training and ongoing support. The more granular the data, the more support teachers and administrators need as they analyze and interpret that data. Implementation support is critical to an effective assessment plan, including teacher professional development, dependable technology, convenient access to data, and support in analyzing student performance.

For a more comprehensive framework for evaluating assessments, explore the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Criteria for High-Quality Assessments.

MAP Growth: An example of high-quality assessment 

One tool that exemplifies the principles of high-quality assessment is MAP Growth, the computer-adaptive interim testing solution from NWEA. With over 50,000 standards-aligned items, the test algorithm continuously adjusts to each student’s ability level, adapting item difficulty above- or below-grade-level.

Norms and linking studies help educators understand where students stand relative to their peers and how they are likely to perform on state summative tests and college readiness exams. This data supports more informed decisions about resource allocation, differentiated instruction, and MTSS and RTI placements.

Tips for selecting or designing high-quality assessments

When selecting high-quality assessments, there are several key considerations worth keeping in mind:

• Look for trusted solutions with widespread adoption. Avoid assessments with limited adoption and credibility. Widespread adoption means assessments have been large-scale field tested and their items are well calibrated, resulting in more reliable, trustworthy data. Choose known solutions that are trusted by educators.
• Ensure comprehensive grade and subject coverage. While individual assessments may focus on specific grades or subjects, your overall assessment approach should provide the longitudinal data you need. If tracking growth across K–12 is a priority, ensure your selected assessments can provide consistent, comparable data across grades and subjects.
• Verify alignment with standards. Look for solutions where items are aligned to the standards that students are expected to learn.
• Prioritize validity and reliability. Assessments are only as good as the data they produce. High-quality assessments should deliver valid, reliable data.

Establishing high-quality assessment

Choosing an assessment solution is a task that must be approached thoughtfully, but often the harder challenge is successfully implementing and creating a data-driven school culture that properly values assessment as the powerful tool that it can be. Here are four key practices for establishing and implementing high-quality assessment:

1. Earn trust

Trust between administrators, teachers, and school staff is the foundation of any successful data-driven initiative. Without trust, well-meaning initiatives often fail to take root, leading to faculty fatigue and morale issues. But when leaders work to develop supportive relationships with teachers, doors are opened to new data-informed conversations and collaborations.

2. Lead with intention

Teachers know when an initiative has been rolled out with purpose rather than launched without sufficient preparation. Leaders can thoughtfully advance an improvement process that unfolds over time. This means taking a holistic look at the practices, protocols, processes, and systems that could make or break improvement efforts, helping teachers personalize learning to meet individual student needs.

3. Engage the full school community

School culture is formed by stakeholders at all levels—leaders, teachers, staff, students, parents, and guardians. The more all members of the school community can be consistently engaged in discussions and activities around assessment and data use, the richer and more successful the school’s assessment culture will become.

4. Promote data literacy

To meet the challenge of turning assessment data into academic gains, schools need all hands on deck. Everyone needs to have some knowledge of data and how to use it. The Plan-Do-Study-Act model can be an excellent fit for efforts to promote data literacy and provide training to those who need it.

The benefits of high-quality assessment

When educators have access to high-quality assessment data, the results can be transformative. Using data in education effectively means turning reliable assessment results into action. Teachers create targeted instructional practices, while school and district leaders rely on assessments to inform resource allocations and foster collaboration among educators. In the end, the ones who benefit the most are the students. When their proficiency is accurately measured and regularly tracked, they can become stewards of their own learning.

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Explore HMH assessments—built around the core characteristics of quality assessments. Help educators gain a complete picture of student achievement.