Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Grade Level: Middle School (6-8)

Distinguishing Formative Assessment from Other Educational Assessment Labels

From the publisher: “In this document, the FAST SCASS (Formative Assessment for Students and Teachers – State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards) aims to clarify the meaning and uses of the types of assessment most frequently used in education. By so doing, the FAST SCASS intends to clarify what formative assessment is and is not in order to […]

Formative Assessment: Examples of Practice

This document shares some examples of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) definition of formative assessment in practice. The first section of the document provides readers with vignettes of classroom scenarios, some showing formative assessment and others showing classrooms without formative assessment. Each vignette also includes an analysis of how formative assessment was or was not […]

CommonLit

From the website: “CommonLit is a free digital collection of fiction and nonfiction for classrooms… [It] delivers high-quality, free instructional materials to support literacy development for students in grades 5-12. Our resources are: Flexible; Research-Based; Aligned to the Common Core State Standards; Created by teachers, for teachers.”

Assessment in Elementary and Secondary Education: A Primer

The following is a summary of this publication from the Congressional Research Service.  “This report provides a framework for understanding various types of assessments that are administered in elementary and secondary schools. It broadly discusses various purposes of educational assessment and describe comprehensive assessment systems. Common assessment measures currently used in education are described, including […]

Materials for Teachers

This website includes standard-aligned units, lessons, resources, tools for use in the formative assessment process, and “Dream Team” instructional guides for a range of subject areas and grade levels. Most of the materials in math and ELA are from outside sources but have been rated by Connecticut educators using the EQuiP Rubric, with their associated […]

Second Year of Assessments Communications Toolkit

The Council of Chief State School Officers developed this toolkit to help states and school districts communicate before, during, and after the 2016 assessment testing window. This toolkit includes a broad number of adaptable communications resources ranging from talking points to a parent letter. Spanish translations are also available.  Users are advised to download the full toolkit, then selectively pick and adapt resources […]