Assessment Design & Development

“Assessment does not stand outside teaching and learning but stands in dynamic interaction with it.”

— C.V. Gipps*

The Challenge

Creating assessments that accurately measure what students are expected to know, understand, and do, while meeting federal, state, and local requirements, can be challenging. Well-designed assessments help teachers see how well students are achieving learning goals and ensure that they align with state and local standards.

What We Do

We work with state education leaders, district leaders, teachers, schools, and education organizations to offer guidance on creating research-based assessments and practices that improve teaching, support learning, and measure progress.

Project

Los Angeles County Office of Education Performance Task Development Project: A Case Study

Our hands-on workshops provided LACOE teachers with opportunities to better understand academic standards, create assessment tools aligned with those standards, and use performance assessments in a continuous improvement cycle.

Project

Building and Using Authentic Performance Tasks for Science and Math

In this webinar we talked about our support for teams in Los Angeles County who are working together to help teachers develop skills to create and use performance assessments as part of the teaching and learning process.

“As a result of WestEd’s support for our district and school leaders to strengthen teachers’ use of formative assessment, evidence collected by our district at the classroom, school and district level demonstrates improvements in students’ knowledge and use of self-regulation skills in classrooms where teachers are using formative assessment. We also have evidence of improved climate and cultural conditions, increased effectiveness of academic coaching to support changes to the student role, and improved student engagement. Aligned with the student role expectations in our Portrait of a Graduate, the district has evidence of significant shifts in beliefs related to the teacher and student roles in learning and increased recognition across our school and community about the benefits of student self-regulation to support student achievement and lifelong learning.”

— Assistant Superintendent, Tucson, Arizona

Request Help With Assessment Design and Development

*Gipps, C.V. (1994). Beyond testing: Towards a theory of educational assessment. The Falmer Press.