“Year-end tests are autopsies, not assessments: they explain what went wrong after it is too late to change course.”
— Paul Bambrick-Santoyo in “Leveraging Leadership”
At CommonLit, we believe that teachers and administrators should be given the tools to play an active and continuous role in measuring student growth and in identifying areas for student improvement. To make this possible, schools need high-quality quarterly assessments and formative data that provide clear action steps.
To give administrators and teachers the data points needed to make effective instructional decisions for students, CommonLit has created two solutions — CommonLit Interim Assessments and CommonLit Formative Insights.
In this post, we’ll be focusing on CommonLit Interim Assessments. Our quarterly digital assessments are:
- Easy to use,
- tightly aligned to grade-level standards, and
- designed to give administrators and teachers the actionable data they need to make effective instructional decisions.
CommonLit Interim Assessments
Ease of Use
Millions of students and teachers across the country rely on CommonLit.org each month. That’s why we’ve designed a curriculum and assessment program that is intuitive and user-friendly.
Our assessments can only be accessed through our secure testing platform, which closely mimics what students will see on their end-of-year assessment. To ensure a smooth testing experience, CommonLit’s District Success team leads virtual kickoff trainings for each of our partners.
We also know how much of a burden it can be for teachers to set up their students and classes on online programs, which is why we’ve integrated with Clever to take care of rostering and Single Sign-On for you.
“(My teachers) know that if they email (CommonLit) they are going to get a really quick and helpful response. It has been a really professional and pleasant experience.”
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Alignment to Grade-Level Expectations
Our assessments are designed to be fair for all students and valid indicators of students’ reading ability. Each assessment includes: one literary passage, two paired informational passages, 20–30 standards-aligned text-dependent questions, and an explanatory or argumentative writing prompt.
Our assessment passages and questions go through rounds of review and field testing to ensure that they’re aligned to grade-level expectations. You can read more about how our team develops our assessments here.
“The (CommonLit) assessments have been excellent. The questions are high-quality, and the way that the distractors are written are top notch as far as item writing goes. Also, the quality of the text, and the features in the text for the standards that you’re assessing are very clear.”
— Terri Bradshaw, Secondary Literacy Coach for Blount County Schools
Actionable Data Tracking for Administrators and Teachers
Students in grades 3–12 have the opportunity to take up to four CommonLit Interim Assessments throughout the school year. This gives administrators, teachers, and students the ability to track overall and standards-based performance from quarter to quarter.
Our administrator data reports enable school teams to identify which standards and question types are giving students difficulty, and our library of formative lessons makes it easy for teachers to reteach key skills.
Next Steps
Are you interested in rolling out our affordable interim assessments in your district? If so, email partnerships@commonlit.org to discuss pricing and next steps with a member of the CommonLit School Partnerships team.
