P-12 Assessment Types
These are quick checks during instruction to guide learning.
What are formative assessments?
This ensures your assessment matches what you intend to measure.
What is validity?
These intelligence tests were historically used to justify segregation.
What are IQ tests?
These three terms help describe the central trend of student performance.
What are mean, median, and mode?
These four audiences need clear communication about assessment results.
Who are learners, guardians, school personnel, and the local community?
These assessments happen at the end of a unit to evaluate learning.
What are summative assessments?
This practice starts with choosing standards and building lessons backward from the assessment.
What is backwards planning?
This term describes high-pressure tests that carry heavy consequences.
What is high-stakes testing?
Teachers use these tools to check understanding quickly.
What are dipsticks or formative checks?
This tool helps students track their own growth over time.
What is a self-assessment or reflection journal?
These assessments happen before instruction begins.
What are diagnostic assessments?
This tool helps ensure assessments are fair, clear, and not unintentionally biased.
What is peer review or test critique?
This movement used assessments to promote racial hierarchies.
What is eugenics?
This method helps track skill development across lessons.
What is backwards planning or the learning cycle.
This friendly, family-focused communication explains your assessment philosophy.
What is a syllabus or welcome letter?
These assessments show applied or real-world learning.
What are performance assessments?
This tool can help teachers pace instruction and assess learning daily.
What is the DOK wheel?
This form of cultural exclusion in testing can affect student scores.
What is cultural bias?
These informal methods can supplement test data for deeper insight.
What are interviews, observations, or permanent products?
This written policy breaks down how you grade and reassess.
What is a student-friendly assessment policy?
These compare students to either a benchmark or their peers.
What are criterion-referenced and norm-referenced assessments?
Teachers should use this method to break a standard into teachable parts.
What is unpacking the standard?
These types of assessments provide fairer alternatives to traditional tests.
What are portfolio-based, project-based, or performance-based assessments?
This tool uses data to help visually organize student assessment concerns.
What is the quadrant analysis tool?
This activity asks cross-content teachers to compare data and identify shared action plans.
What is a PLC meeting?