How Assessments — and the Data They Reveal — Impact the K-12 Classroom
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The education landscape has changed dramatically in the past 20 years, especially post-COVID. Educators are grappling with numerous challenges that make their profession difficult and can lead to poor teacher retention, such as learning loss and academic achievement gaps. As education gaps widen, teachers must deliver personalized learning to students with varying skills and behaviors. Gaining a deep understanding of the many academic content standards educators must teach, let alone bring alive in the classroom, further strains the profession. Additionally, technology has forever altered how teachers teach and how students learn. While it has created meaningful opportunities for teaching and learning, it has also introduced new complexity and uncertainty around tool adoption. Amid growing assessment demands, one of the biggest challenges for educators is not simply collecting data, but knowing which data matters and how to act on it.
Given classroom teachers' limited resources, how can schools support this work sustainably?
School districts and administrators are key to helping teachers bridge the gaps between understanding academic content standards, administering the required assessments, and using the data they reveal to improve classroom instruction. This ongoing support can help improve morale and break the cycle of attrition. “We’re here to help teachers understand the academic standards — and the data that assessments provide — so they can provide the personalized learning that is so challenging, but necessary, to achieve,” explains Jennifer Fletcher, Ph.D., Assistant Superintendent of PreK-12 Student Services for Chandler Unified School District.
K-12 Assessments Fall into Four Buckets
Assessments often get a bad rap in the K-12 classroom, not just from students and parents, but teachers themselves. The number of assessments administered throughout the school year and their impact on instructional time are ongoing sources of contention. Another common complaint is a lack of clarity in how the data is being used and what value it offers to educators and students.
When you step back and look closely at what assessments measure and the data they produce, their value becomes clearer. The information gleaned from data-rich assessments about student progress can ease many of the daily pain points educators experience. Robust assessment data helps educators to gain a 360-degree view of the whole child and create more inclusive feedback loops with educators, administrators, and caregivers.
There are four “buckets” of assessments most school districts administer. Each serves a distinct purpose and provides valuable data that can be used at the classroom, school, district, and state-wide level to monitor student progress and support personalized student learning. The different types of assessments provide data at varying levels of specificity, from day-to-day classroom assessments to end-of-year summative assessments.
Formative assessments are day-to-day assessments that provide immediate, actionable data to teachers and students about how they are progressing toward learning the academic content standards. They help identify which students have mastered a standard and which still need targeted support, so the teacher can direct the next moves in the classroom.
Screening, diagnostic, and progress monitoring assessments are commonly used with the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) frameworks to provide more specific data, helping teachers identify risk levels and targeted skills. They screen whether a student needs additional instructional support to catch up on skills and access on-grade-level learning.
Interim assessments are given two to four times per year to check in on the whole body of knowledge taught in a specific course. They provide a predictive insight into whether students are on track for a course with respect to the state’s definition of proficiency. These benchmark assessments essentially provide a snapshot of performance and measure growth over time.
Summative assessments evaluate student learning at the conclusion of a defined instructional period, whether the end of a unit of instruction, the end of a semester course, or the end of a school year. They aim to describe how students, in general, performed against the course standards.
The data from each type of assessment reveals unique insights that drive classroom instruction and broader educational goals. As you would expect, assessments closer to instruction are more closely aligned with learning. They provide fine-grained data that identify students who need help, so teachers can take immediate instructional action. Benchmarking, interim, and summative assessments, on the other hand, are zoomed-out signals of how students — and teachers — are doing overall. They lose instructional relevance because they are geared more toward school improvement and program evaluation.
“Formative assessments provide teachers an ongoing pulse of their classroom, with progress monitoring that informs teacher and student actions,” explains Dr. Laine Bradshaw, Executive Partner, Measurement & Learning at Pearson. “The other assessments are larger checkpoints that inform leaders and communities aiming to make decisions about resourcing to support learning and educators. Understanding data at different levels ultimately benefits a wide range of learners and leads to better instruction.”
We’re here to help teachers understand the academic standards — and the data that assessments provide — so they can provide the personalized learning that is so challenging, but necessary, to achieve.
- Jennifer Fletcher, Ph.D., assistant superintendent of PreK-12 Student Services for Chandler Unified School District
Gathering and Applying Assessment Data
So, how are teachers using assessment data to overcome classroom challenges and make instructional decisions? After assessments are administered, careful data analysis is the first step to understanding a student’s academic progress and gaining a glimpse into their well-being. Getting teachers to hone in on the critical assessments that can actually drive student success is key.
In Dr. Fletcher’s district, they have created data visualization systems, or dashboards, to make interpreting and reading data easier for teachers. The assessment data is processed and uploaded into the dashboard overnight, so teachers can access the data and move quickly with interventions.
The district also conducts professional development data workshops at every stakeholder level and encourages grade-level professional learning communities (PLCs) at individual schools. In PLCs, teachers meet with their peers to study data from recent assessments, evaluate achievement and skills gaps, define small groups, and decide where interventions are needed.
“Teachers already face numerous daily obstacles,” Dr. Fletcher notes. “We are trying to create systems that make data accessible and easier to interpret.”
When administered well and analyzed carefully, assessments and the data they reveal support learning for every student. By pinpointing the specific skills and standards an individual student still needs to work on, teachers can overcome academic achievement gaps and provide targeted, differentiated education that is so vital in today’s classrooms.
To learn more about how Pearson's reliable, innovative educational assessments help teachers and learners achieve success from early childhood to post-secondary education, check out the Educational Assessments page.