What tool might be used to do a comprehensive assessment of student performance?

Understanding the different types of assessment in education is essential to supporting teaching and learning.

If you’re looking to understand and implement different types of assessments more effectively, you’re in the right place.

In this guide, we will break down:

• A definition for assessment in education
• Types of assessment with examples
• And more

Table of Contents

• How Do You Define Assessment in Education?
• Why Is it Important to Understand Types of Assessment in Education?
• What Are the Types of Assessment in Education? 6 Types of Assessments
• All Types of Assessment in One Place

How Do You Define Assessment? 

Assessment refers to varied methods and/or tools that are used to evaluate/certify, measure, monitor, observe, and document learning progress, academic readiness, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students. Assessment plays a key role in our data-driven decision making and is an important part of the whole child data picture.

Different types of assessments enable us to answer key questions around student learning, such as:

• What do students know? What do they not yet know?
• Where are students struggling? Why?
• What should I teach next? What should I adjust in future lessons?
• Which students need an intervention? Which intervention matches the need?
• Does retained learning meet district and state expectations?
• Does our curriculum have gaps between learning expectations and assessment?

But what are the common types of assessment? What do they each help us understand about student learning and needs?

In this post, we’ll take a look at each of the assessment types that create a comprehensive assessment system.

Why Is it Important to Understand Types of Assessment in Education?

Assessments help us answer key questions about student learning. But in order for assessment data to help drive decisions, it’s imperative that we use an assessment tool that is appropriate to the task at hand. Understanding the types of assessments is the first step to using assessment data to effectively support students.

For instance, progress monitoring assessments are extremely sensitive to growth and designed to measure small increases in progress. Other types of assessments aren’t structurally designed to measure those small increases in growth; using an interim assessment weekly or bi-weekly will not help educators accurately track student progress and might lead to confusing or misleading results.

Without a sound understanding of assessment types and purposes, it’s easy to use an assessment for a mismatched task. For that reason, it’s important that all educators have a foundational understanding of assessment types—and what each assessment type can and cannot tell us about student learning.

To learn more about assessment types and how to build a comprehensive assessment system that meets your unique needs, download our Complete Guide to Comprehensive Assessment Systems eBook.

Types of Assessment

What Are the Types of Assessment in Education? 6 Types of Assessments

Although nomenclature can vary from district to district, there are six main types of assessments in education:

1. Just-In-Time/Short Cycle Assessments (Formative)
2. Universal Screening Assessments
3. Diagnostic Assessments
4. Progress Monitoring Assessments
5. Interim Assessments
6. Summative Assessments

Let’s explore how each type of assessment helps analyze and support learning in the sections below.

Just-In-Time / Short-Cycle Assessments (Formative)

Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction. It creates feedback and reveals needed adjustments for ongoing teaching and learning in order to increase students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes. Just-in-time/short cycle assessments are assessments used as tools to inform and fuel the formative assessment process on an ongoing, frequent basis (even daily). 

When used formatively, assessments can overcome some traditional, commonly-conceived limitations of “tests.” With the right tools in place, such as DnA’s Live Proctoring tool, short-cycle assessments can be spun up quickly and adapt to meet immediate student needs during the learning process. Using these just-in-time assessments can yield rich information to feed instructional processes and deepen student metacognitive processes. 

Examples of Just-In-Time / Short-Cycle Assessments (Formative)

Examples include:

• • • Classroom assessments
    • Quick quizzes
    • Discussion
    • Observations
    • Comprehension checks
    • Entrance/exit tickets

Keep in mind that any assessment can be a part of the formative process as long as it’s used to provide data to inform instruction. 

Universal Screening Assessments

Universal screening is the process of gathering academic and social-emotional behavior (SEB) data about all the students in a class, grade, school, or district in order to identify which students need additional assistance to meet learning goals.

Universal screening assessments are administered as tools to inform and fuel that process. They’re most often administered to all students in the areas of reading, math, and SEB. Screening happens early in the year and can also occur at other points throughout the year.

They should be valid, reliable, and have a high degree of predictive validity with high-stakes tests. Universal screening assessments are critical to an effective multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) implementation, as they identify Tier 1 needs as well as students who may be at risk and in need of additional support.

Examples of Universal Screening Assessments

FastBridge is an example.

Diagnostic Assessments

Diagnostic assessment is the process of using multiple measures and reports to identify what a student does or does not know in relation to specific learning goals in order to guide academic, curricular, and instructional decisions.

Diagnostic assessments can be administered as a tool to inform and fuel that process. They’re often administered to students, grade levels, and/or groups flagged by universal screening to pinpoint specific learning needs (e.g., calculation vs math).

Examples of Diagnostic Assessment

High-quality universal screeners, such as FastBridge, provide diagnostic reporting as part of the universal screening results. Diagnostic assessment is critical to MTSS implementations, as it helps ensure interventions are appropriately aligned to students’ specific needs.

In any case, these data should be used in conjunction with other data—as part of an evaluation of a student’s academic and SEB learning needs—before reaching diagnostic conclusions about student performance.

Types of assessment often used in the diagnostic assessment process:

Progress Monitoring Assessments

Progress monitoring is a standardized process of evaluating progress toward a performance target, based on rates of improvement from frequent (usually weekly) assessment of a specific skill.

Progress monitoring assessments are administered as a tool to inform and fuel that process. They’re typically administered to all students receiving Tier 2 or Tier 3 interventions.

Progress monitoring assessments are very sensitive to growth and are aligned to the skill or need that is targeted by an intervention. They help measure whether an intervention is working and if it’s working fast enough.

Examples of Types of Progress Monitoring Assessments

Examples include:

• • • FastBridge
    • Running records
    • Mastery measurement
    • Curriculum-based measurement
    • Direct Behavior Ratings

Interim Assessments

Interim assessments measure students’ standards proficiency. They’re typically administered periodically or seasonally (e.g., fall, winter, spring).

These assessments are aligned to a pacing calendar and the district’s scope and sequence (or the progressive order in which students encounter the content that they’re expected to master by the end of a course, study, or curriculum).

Interim assessments are often used to predict the students’ end-of-year proficiency. They are usually created either by a professional assessment vendor or by using a valid and reliable item bank in order to ensure quality.

Examples of Interim Assessments

 Illuminate’s Inspect pre-built assessments are an example.

Summative Assessments

Summative assessment is the process of evaluating or certifying learning at the end of a specific period of instruction. 

Summative assessments are often used for grading students and can be used to measure growth or change in student learning. They’re typically administered at the end of the year, end of course, or end of term.

Summative assessments can provide a lot of useful data regarding student achievement, while also guiding decision-making around changes in curriculum, instructional strategies, staffing ratios, course offerings, and professional development needs.

Examples of Summative Assessments

Examples include:

• • • High-stakes state standards assessments
    • SAT
    • ACT
    • Inspect Comprehensives

Just as formative assessment is a process, so is summative assessment. Any assessment is part of the summative assessment process if it’s used to evaluate or certify learning after instruction has occurred. Many teachers employ unit exams and Friday spelling tests, for example, as summative assessments.

All Types of Assessment in One Solution

Illuminate provides a complete set of standards and skills-based assessment tools to understand each student’s academic and social-emotional behavior (SEB) learning and needs. Learn more about our Comprehensive Assessment Solution.

*****

Illuminate Education equips educators to take a data-driven approach to serving the whole child. Our solution combines comprehensive assessment, MTSS management and collaboration, and real-time dashboard tools, and puts them in the hands of educators. As a result, educators can monitor learning and growth, identify academic and social-emotional behavioral needs, and align targeted supports in order to accelerate learning for each student. 

Ready to discover your one-stop shop for your district’s educational needs? Let’s talk.

What are the tools used to assess students performance?

What are the tools for assessment of performance?

What is the tool is used to score the performance of the students?

What are the 3 performance assessment tools?