How do assessments help parents and students?
Well-defined expectations: Students learn most effectively when they are provided with clear expectations about
the knowledge and skills they should develop during the school year.13 High-quality assessments reinforce academic
standards in providing students and parents with clear expectations of what students should achieve in any given
school year, guiding their progression through course content and framing their learning in the larger context of the
year. To ensure that expectations are clearly communicated, it is important to provide parents and students comprehensive information about assessments and sample test items. In Tennessee, data from standardized assessments
factor into students’ final course grades, impacting their graduation from high school. For this reason, students’ performance on standardized assessments prior to 12th grade keep students and parents informed about their progress
on the standards and their likelihood of successful transition from high school to college or career.14
Indicators of college and career readiness: Assessments also provide parents and students with feedback on a
student’s educational progress at the end of the school year. When data from high-quality assessments indicate that
students are struggling in certain subject areas or with specific standards, parents can support early intervention
practices to help students catch up to their peers. A high-quality assessment allows parents to understand their
students’ progress on standards in comparison to other students in Tennessee and around the country. When assessments are high quality and linked to standards of college and career readiness, data from these assessments can
help parents and students understand how they are progressing toward success in college and career.
How do assessments help teachers?
Clear expectations: High-quality assessments and standards provide teachers with a roadmap, making the expectations set forth in standards concrete. In this way, high-quality assessments have the potential to guide teachers’
instructional decisions, providing them with important indicators about how to balance the time they spend on each
of the standards and a better understanding of what their students should be able to do after being taught the standards. In a well-designed assessment system, assessments are so well aligned to the standards that teaching to the
test and teaching to the standards become synonymous. While narrowly focused assessments can cause a narrowing
of instruction, well-aligned assessments should lead to well-balanced instruction that reflects the full rigor and depth
of academic standards.
Instructional improvement: High-quality assessments provide teachers with information that helps them identify
instructional strengths and opportunities for improvement. In Tennessee, data from standardized assessments are
used in the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS), an important component of teacher evaluations.
Combined with other measures of teaching effectiveness such as classroom observations, student achievement data,
or student perception surveys, data from assessments can provide teachers with valuable instructional feedback. The
results of standardized assessments should provide teachers with insight into their instructional strengths in terms of
subject areas as well as with certain groups of students. This information can help teachers make data-driven decisions about what types of professional learning opportunities to pursue or where to seek instructional support.
Support for student needs: High-quality assessments provide teachers with information they can use at the beginning of the school year to better understand their students’ needs. Students’ performance on the previous year’s
standardized assessment can support teachers’ decisions about how to group students and differentiate their instruction. While teachers rely on data from formative assessments and classroom-based assessments to inform their
instruction throughout the school year, data from standardized assessments provide teachers with a foundational
understanding of student needs at the beginning of the school year.
How do assessments help school and district leaders?
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Teacher support practices: In Tennessee, data from standardized assessments are used to calculate TVAAS measures. Through TVAAS data, high-quality assessments provide information to school and district leaders that helps
them understand what type of support teachers need and which teachers most need support. This information can
help inform mentoring and coaching partnerships, pairing teachers in need of support with highly effective teachers
or instructional coaches. Data from high-quality assessments can also help guide decisions at the school