Four Questions to Ask Before Investing in Another Assessment Platform

Considering an investment in another platform should begin with evaluating your current ecosystem. Previous waves of additional funding are ceasing, making it more imperative to be selective with resources and spending, while critically looking at what is already available. This review may result in replacing or supplanting current resources to meet identified needs. The following guiding questions may help you discern which solutions will provide the most value.

What need are you trying to solve with the platform?

A plethora of testing platforms, applications, interventions, supplementary resources, and core instruction are readily available to most districts. If they are independent of the others and are not integrated on any level, professional learning can support teachers in connecting the dots between disparate pieces of data, results, and levels of support. New assessment platforms should either address a need that is not being met or demand a more efficient and effective approach to improving student outcomes and teacher efficiency.

How will it integrate with your Tiers 1, 2, and 3 learning?

Assessments of any kind should provide information about what students do or don’t know and are or aren’t able to do. Pre-diagnostic assessments can provide valuable insights before teaching to identify the focus of upcoming learning objectives delivered through Tier 1 core instruction. Further, assessments may validate mastery of content taught and written or identify gaps in learning that require differentiated teaching for intervention or supplemental resources for Tier 2 small group intervention.

Lastly, formative or summative data derived within the platform enables teachers to provide informed, targeted, and specific personalized intervention. An integrated and interconnected assessment platform can support all levels of teaching and learning. Costs for an all-in-one platform can be cost-prohibitive and may necessitate combined funding sources, such as curriculum, supplemental, assessment, and professional learning, to meet budget requirements.

What do you hope to learn from your assessments and data?

Assessment should be intentional and purposeful. Data that provides insightful evidence about students’ strengths, challenges, and need for enrichment enables teachers to make informed decisions about the best approaches and time spent propelling students forward in their learning progress. Meaningful data builds teacher efficiency and effectiveness—time spent on doing the right things at the right time. Guessing about what students know and can do is replaced with confident decision-making so teachers can focus on what they do best—teaching.

What will you do with the resulting data?

Students who receive whole-class Tier 1 instruction and are then assessed on a platform that differs from the Core instruction may experience a disconnect between what they need to deepen their understanding and what they receive in the form of intervention. Teachers are tasked with searching for resources for differentiating learning that are aligned with the needs of small groups of students. Often, students are placed on apps that offer gamified content, more test items, or content that is not even targeted at their specific needs; at the same time, standards are being taught in the Core curriculum.

Ideally, gaps in their learning should be shored up with just-in-time scaffolding of the areas in which they have gaps or have developed misconceptions. Content taught in new and different ways that meet learners’ needs will deepen their knowledge and ability to do what the standards demand. This might include drawing pictures, using graphic organizers, using models, or accessing academic vocabulary supports.

Less is more.

Intentional, purposeful assessment platforms, core curricula, supplemental and intervention resources that are all aligned to the same set of standards and content taught impact implementation with efficacy. This results in better budget management, greater utilization of purchased resources, and greater student outcomes.