3 Things To Consider About Common Assessments in Education
Common assessments are an essential part of any assessment strategy. They offer a consistent way to capture data and track progress against standards, identify students or groups who need additional support, and better predict learning outcomes.
Whether you’re new to this type of collaborative assessment or you’ve used common assessments in education for years, there are three things to consider to make sure you’re getting the most out of your strategy—and common assessment tools:
1. What are your common assessment goals?
What does your ideal common assessment strategy look like? Most school and district administrators likely want a consistent way to understand student growth and identify areas for greater focus and support. These insights help you better allocate your resources, plan for end-of-year testing, and target professional development strategies to drive more significant impact.
Your common assessment strategy and edtech tools should support your current assessment goals and grow with your school or district as those goals evolve. If you haven’t set common assessment goals, now is the perfect time to start! You can ask yourself questions like:
What’s the purpose of this common assessment?
How does its purpose dictate our administration strategy?
What resources do we need to administer and track common assessments?
How does each common assessment support student learning in our school or district?
Answering these questions can help you form your common assessment goals and the foundation for your assessment strategy. They can also serve as a guide to help you identify edtech tools that make it easier to meet your goals.
For example, if one of your goals is to provide universal access to common assessment data, a feature like Formative’s real-time, central data repository can help keep all your common assessment data in one place.
Re-evaluating your assessment tools?
We’ve identified 10 things to consider and features to look for when evaluating an assessment tool. Use them as a guide to decide if your current tools or future purchases align with your goals and expectations.
2. How do you collect common assessment data?
Speaking of common assessment data collection, finding the right way to collect, store, and use all your data can make your common assessment strategy much more efficient.
Even with so many edtech tools available, many teachers still use paper assessments, oral checks for understanding, and other methods to collect data about students’ skills and comprehension. When that data doesn’t live in one place, you risk losing insights you can use to track patterns in student learning and influence in-the-moment instruction.
Plus, easily accessible data makes it easier for teachers to respond to students' needs in real time. A continuous feedback loop helps teachers clarify instruction and provide a better learning experience for students.
How you collect data also affects how you report on it. Your data is only as good as the insights you can pull from it. When you know exactly what metrics you want to track with each common assessment, you have a better chance of finding a tool that provides the reports you need. For example, Formative offers teacher, schoolwide, and district standards-progress reports to make leading data accessible for everyone.
3. Where can your educators collaborate on common assessments?
Collaboration is key to creating effective assessments and developing the best learning environment possible for students. It’s so important in education that it’s a hallmark of professional learning community (PLC) culture. Common assessments, in particular, are a way to collect consistent, accurate data that informs the evolution of learning within a school or district. They enable educators to compare apples-to-apples data, analyze collective results, and make data-informed decisions to guide their future instructional strategies.
Your common assessment strategy could crumble if your educators don’t have a space that makes collaboration easy. Cumbersome tools or a lack of collaboration space altogether may force teachers to work in silos when planning, collecting data, and drawing insights.
To support collaboration, ensure that you provide both in-person and digital spaces for them to share ideas, data, and insights. These types of spaces include:
In-person faculty and staff meetings
PLC committee meetings
Professional development courses
Digital tools that allow all educators to submit, edit, update, and share content
Does your common assessment tool check all the boxes?
If you’re buying your first common assessment edtech tool or want to update your current assessment and daily instruction platforms, check out our guide, “10 Things To Consider Before Buying an Assessment Tool.” Inside, you’ll find all the tips and criteria you need to make sure your tools support current and future goals, make space for collaboration, and deliver all the reporting features you need to succeed.
Or, just check out Formative, where educators come together for daily instruction and assessment. It checks all the boxes you need to provide frequent, high-quality assessment opportunities, collaborate on assessment development, and track data to better influence instruction in any subject or for any grade level.