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Confidently guide instruction and improve student learning outcomes with a flexible suite of comprehensive assessment tools.
Every student follows a unique learning journey. In order to help each learner continually grow, educators need clear and accurate information about where students are in their learning to help them progress.
That’s why a comprehensive assessment system is so important. Different assessment tools are designed to answer different questions about learning. When educators use the right assessment to answer the right question at the right time, they’re able to deeply understand what students know, what they don’t yet know, and the right instructional next steps to take. A comprehensive assessment system ensures educators have the right measures to answer those key questions, while preventing over-testing due to duplicative or unneeded measures.
High-quality assessment tools are truly the building blocks of accelerating learning: they enable every educator to efficiently inform instruction, effectively guide reteaching and additional practice, and pace instruction according to student, group, and classwide needs. A comprehensive assessment system also provides the foundation to a district’s multi-tiered system of support (MTSS), driving key decisions around how to support the universal tier, which students need additional supports in order to succeed, and whether interventions are effective.
Renaissance’s Comprehensive Assessment Solution provides the tools educators need to accelerate learning through insight-driven instruction and tiered whole child supports. Learn more below, or reach out today to talk to an expert.
Our suite of valid and reliable assessments gives your team the flexibility to select the right assessments to meet your unique needs.
From computer-adaptive tests to curriculum-based assessment, from norm-referenced assessments to custom-built tests, Renaissance offers the assessment tools needed to accurately understand learning and drive instruction and intervention at each tier.
Classroom formative assessment confirms that specific learning has taken place and provides data to inform instruction that follows.
Key Questions:
When? Ongoing
Who? All students or small groups
Classroom formative assessments are used continually and routinely (often on a daily basis) to monitor student learning, identify where students struggle, and determine where misconceptions exist, so that teachers can take the right next step to help move learning forward.
Universal screening identifies students in need of additional assistance in order to meet learning goals.
Key Questions:
When? 3–5x/year
Who? All students
Educators should use universal screening data as a check on where students are, to monitor whether students are equitably growing at needed rates, and to identify opportunities for Tier 1 improvements.
Learn more about our universal screeners
Like universal screeners, skill screeners are given to all students to identify which learners need additional assistance in order to meet learning goals. Whereas universal screeners assess a range of skills, skill screeners focus solely on essential skills, like phonics.
As a result, they’re able to yield rich instructional information. Skill screening data dramatically enhances the skill data provided by universal screeners and enables teachers to target instruction in a specific skill domain with increased precision and clarity. Skill screeners are especially important in foundational areas of early learning, such as phonics.
Key Questions:
When? 3x/year
Who? All students
Diagnostic assessment is the process of using multiple measures and reports to identify student strengths and needs in specific skill areas, so teachers can provide instruction to address learning needs.
Key Questions:
When? 2–3x/year
Who? Students or groups flagged by screening
Unlike other screeners, reporting from Renaissance’s universal screeners offers diagnostic information to help pinpoint the specific skills causing students to struggle.
Star Phonics, a skill screener and diagnostic assessment, helps teachers precisely target their phonics instruction—the literacy domain that research affirms causes most students with reading difficulties to struggle.
Progress monitoring evaluates progress toward a learning target, per the rates of improvement for the specific skill being targeted by an intervention. Progress monitoring assessments are very sensitive to growth and help educators accurately track student progress toward their goal.
Key Questions:
When? 1–4x/month, as required
Who? Students receiving Tier 2 or Tier 3 interventions
Using high-quality progress monitoring tools helps educators efficiently remove students from interventions when they are no longer needed, and prevents students from receiving ineffective interventions for prolonged or indefinite periods of time.
Progress monitoring can also help educators determine when interventions are insufficient to meet student needs and a special education referral may be needed.
Learn more about our progress monitoring tools, including Star and FastBridge
Benchmark/common formative assessments measure students’ standards proficiency.
Key Questions:
When? 2–3x/year
Who? All students
Benchmark/common formative assessments are aligned to a pacing calendar and the district’s scope and sequence. Benchmark/common formative data can be aggregated and used to analyze class, school, and district trends in learning.
Summative assessments evaluate, certify, and/or grade learning at the end of a specific period of instruction.
Key Questions:
When? End of year, end of term, end of course
Who? All students
Summative assessments enable central, aggregated data tracking around trends, groups of students, and equitable practices.
An important aspect of measuring student learning is understanding how students are performing in comparison to their peers and/or grade-level benchmarks. This requires valid, reliable, norm-referenced assessments. Two commonly used types of norm-based assessments are computer-adaptive tests (CATs) and curriculum-based measures (CBMs).
Depending on state or local mandates and district preferences, either a curriculum-based assessment or computer-adaptive test may better fit your needs. Renaissance provides both options, so you can choose the assessment options that work for you and your students.
Computer-adaptive tests individualize, or adapt, assessment questions to each student’s skill level to reveal what they know and what they still need to learn. CAT data gives an accurate measure of broad achievement and a highly reliable prediction of student performance on high-stakes exams.
Content: Assesses a broader range of skills
Administered: Group administration, which offers logistical efficiencies
Time: Under 20 mins
Sensitivity, Accuracy, and Validity: Research shows CATs to be sensitive to growth, accurately predictive of performance, and valid and reliable tools for the purpose of universal screening and progress monitoring.
Curriculum-based assessments focus on a small number of specific skills. CBMs typically use parallel forms, meaning the items are uniform across students, but employ reading passages or math problems with different words, letters, problems, or numbers from one form to the next.
This strategy avoids giving students the same assessment week after week, while measuring skill growth over time. CBMs are also highly predictive of overall reading or math skills and can be used during universal screening with criterion-based targets to identify needs.
Content: Assesses one or a few very specific skills
Administration Format: Can be 1:1 for first-hand observation of student performance or computer-based
Time: Very brief (e.g., as little as 1 minute to administer)
Sensitivity, Accuracy, and Validity: Research shows CBMs to be sensitive to growth, accurately predictive of performance, and valid and reliable tools for the purpose of universal screening and progress monitoring.
Just as educators require norm-based assessments to understand how students are performing and growing in comparison to their peers and/or grade-level benchmarks, they also need deep visibility into how students are mastering the instructional content of the district’s unique scope and sequence.
DnA enables districts to create and administer standards-based assessments aligned to their unique scope and sequence for rich insights to drive instruction and bolster standards mastery.
Learn more about assessment tools and how they help you accelerate learning for all students.
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