Assessment Design & Development

“Assessment is today’s means of modifying tomorrow’s instruction.”

— Carol Ann Tomlinson

The Challenge

We seek to design and develop assessments that provide a comprehensive portrait of students’ knowledge, skills, and abilities relative to federal, state, and local learning standards. We do so through research- and industry-supported ways that yield valid and reliable results. We engage with our clients to know and understand what information they want to gain from an assessment and what information they want to report. With this in mind, we work collaboratively with each of our clients to develop an assessment that meets their unique needs.

What We Do

We partner with state and district education leaders, teachers, schools, and educational organizations to develop research-based assessments that help inform and empower learning for all students.

Project

Next Generation Science Assessment

WestEd worked with Delaware to complete a cognitive lab project to determine what types of questions would best support students in sharing their three-dimensional knowledge in efficient, scalable ways. After completing this work, WestEd ramped up production and delivered a full state science assessment.

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.

“The WestEd team is knowledgeable, organized, creative, and receptive. They value constructive feedback and provide it as well, which I find extremely beneficial to a productive partnership.”

Dr. April McCrae: Director, Office of Assessment and Accountability, Delaware Department of Education

Request Help With Assessment Design and Development

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