10 Principles

for building a High-Quality system of

assessment
One
A high-quality system of assessment
should be anchored in and assess
students' deeper knowledge, skills,
Captured the and behaviors necessary for
array of
college,career, and civic readiness.
knowledge, skill,
and behaviors These include the ability to master
needed for core academic content, think critically
college, career, and solve complex problem, work
and civic collaborativelly, communicate
readiness(i.e,, effectively.
deeper learning)
Two A high-quality system of
assessment places a focus on
Balance incorporating a wide variety of
assessment of assessment from the state and
learning with local level to inform educational
assessment for decisions, ideally with each
and as learning
assessment contributing a
through a
comprehensive set specific purpose and use within
of task and the coherent whole
measures
Three At the school and district levels, a
high-quality system of assessment
should advance equity by providing
advance equity data that highlights learning
and be outcomes and by providing learning
inclusive of experience and information that
support high-quality, college and
accessible to career-ready teaching and learning
all students for each and every student and group
of students.
Four A high-quality system of
assessment should be
Build educator accompanied by efforts to build
and school the capacity and resources
capacity for needed to support the shiftt to a
designing and new system of assessment,
using which include the work that
assessment teacher do everyday to assess
student learning.
Five A high-quality system of asssessment
should be efficient as possible for teacher
and students, while recognizing the critical
align role that a variety of assessment play in a
quality education system. Assessment
assessments to should be organized around a theory of
support learning action that efficiently captures and
encourages the full array of colloge- abd
and avoid career-ready knowledge, skill, and
duplication of behaviors.

testing
SIX • Starting from the principles outlined
in Knowing What Students Know, a
high-quality system of assessments
Convey clear, should enable complete, coherent,
coherent, and continuous, and clear pictures of
continuous student and school progress to
college and career readiness, in a
data on student way that data from individual
learning assessments are often found
lacking.
SEVE
N • A high-quality system of
assessments should be developed
and continuously improved with
Include meaningful,
robust stakeholder engagement
ongoing input and
and clear communication to ensure
collaboration from
that key users like educators,
local communities
students, parents, employers,
and diverse
postsecondary institutions, and
stakeholders in the
community leaders understand, find
development and
value in, and support the system of
continuous
assessments.
improvement of the
system
EIGHT • A high-quality system of
assessments should include
mechanisms to pilot and evaluate
Encourage cycles innovative assessments and then
of review, incorporate and continuously
calibration, and improve those that capture and
continuous reflect the deeper-learning skills
improvement of needed for college and career
assessments readiness and more student-
centered learning.
individually and as
a collective system
NINE
• A high-quality system of assessments
should be aligned with a state, district, or
community’s clear theory of action around
Employ high preparing students for college and career
readiness. It should employ high
standards of standards of validity, reliability, and
coherence, fairness for all students for each
assessment contingent on the use of the
validity, specific assessment (e.g. formative vs.
reliability, and summative), aligned with the theory of
action for that system.
fairness
TEN • High-quality student data are
critical to empowering students,
families, educators, and
Protect data communities to learn more about
privacy 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.
Thank you