We offer educators proven tools and methods to develop teaching and learning.
Classroom Solutions
Benchmark items
Benchmark assessments help track student learning throughout the school year, enable teachers to adjust curriculum and instructional planning as needed, and serve different purposes depending on when they are given:
- Start of year — they offer an early view of the skill range of a new group of students
- Mid-year — they provide a sense of student progression
- End of year — they guide summer learning plans or provide a pre-post assessment for the school year
Interim benchmark items can be configured to serve as a “mini summative” that mirror the item type and design of the summative assessment.
Testlets
Brief, scenario-based unit assessments that are administered within one class period, testlets measure students’ understanding of important concepts within grade-level standards and can be used to target specific learning progressions in mathematics and key practices in ELA at each grade level.
These interim assessments can help identify conceptual understanding of key constructs, determine what students understand and how to build on that understanding, and inform instructional decision making.
The ReadBasix™ assessment
By the time students reach upper elementary school, they are expected to have mastered basic reading skills. But many students struggle with basic reading skills well beyond the elementary grades. Based on the RISE/SARA research, the ReadBasix™ assessment was developed to help identify these students and provide teachers with detailed information to target the specific areas of struggle.
The ReadBasix assessment (PDF) is a web-browser assessment for students in grades 3–12, composed of six subtests that each look at a specific component of reading that may be affecting success:
- Word Recognition & Decoding
- Vocabulary
- Morphology
- Sentence Processing
- Reading Efficiency
- Reading Comprehension
The ReadAuthentix™ assessment
Foundational reading skills — like word recognition and decoding, vocabulary and morphology — are essential building blocks for proficient reading comprehension. Students who have well-developed and well-integrated foundational skills are ready to take on texts and reading tasks of increasing complexity.
Our scenario-based reading comprehension assessment, ReadAuthentix (PDF), gives students a purpose for reading and completing tasks as they work through the assessment with simulated teachers and peers.
