and schools should work to provide students with the skills they need to succeed on a technology-based assessment, such
as keyboarding skills. In some cases, it may be important for the testing vendor to offer both technology-based and paper-and-pencil formats of assessments.
Assessments should also offer appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities, as well as students with limited English proficiency. It is important to ensure that the accommodations offered do not threaten the validity of the assessment for
certain groups of students.55 Decisions about accessibility should be based on the needs of individual students, and accommodations should be made only where necessary.
Assessments should provide instructionally useful data.
Assessments should provide students, parents, and teachers with reports on performance that can inform student support
practices and instructional improvement. Reports should be easy for diverse audiences to understand, providing simple
feedback on students’ progress toward mastery of academic standards. This requires more detail than simple indicators of
student proficiency and should include information about students’ understanding of specific concepts and development of
important skills. Finally, assessment reports should focus on students’ progress toward college and career readiness.56 These
reports should be shared with parents in a timely manner and should provide parents with indicators of how best to support
their student’s progress toward success in college and career.
For maximum benefit to instruction, assessment data must be shared with teachers in a timely ma