Bringing a Fresh Perspective to Assessment Purpose

Insights From One School District’s Assessment System Review

Last week, we shared insights from the Bakersfield City School District’s assessment system review, part of our work to help school districts evaluate and adjust their array of required tests. In this post, we share insights from Coachella Valley Unified School District, another California district that participated in our Assessment System Review pilot from January through June 2024. This pilot is supported by the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) through their Data Research Learning Network and led by the Center for Assessment.

Why Did the District Undertake an Assessment System Review?

At the heart of Coachella Valley’s assessment system review was a quest for clarity. Beatriz (Bea) Chavez and Tara Hinchen, who are new to their roles overseeing curriculum and instruction, were grappling with fundamental questions: Why do we assess as we do? Do these assessments truly serve our students’ and teachers’ needs? They sensed a disconnect between the district-mandated assessments and their practical utility in improving educational outcomes.

Tara, drawing from her experience as a former site principal, brought invaluable perspective on how data should support instruction effectively. Bea, with her penchant for questioning established norms, echoed concerns about over-testing and the efficacy of current practices. Together, they led a review of their district-required assessments to ensure relevance and impact.

Ensuring Viewpoint Diversity in the Review

Bea and Tara recognized the importance of diverse viewpoints, so they involved directors, coordinators, the assistant superintendent of instruction, teachers, and instructional coaches. This multifaceted approach ensured that voices from classrooms to district offices were heard, aligning perspectives on the necessity and purpose of assessments.

Key Discovery: Different Assessments, Different Purposes

Grades and Content Areas: Why Focus on Grade 8?

Tara and Bea chose to review 8^th grade first due to its pivotal position in the educational journey: data from this grade can shed important light on students’ readiness for high school. This choice would allow the district to examine a broad spectrum of assessments and offer insights into both middle and secondary educational demands.

Visualizing Data: Important in Assessment System Review

One of the resources provided in the open-access, online learning modules that support our Assessment System Review is a data visualization tool. This tool takes the assessment information that users enter and helps leaders and teachers evaluate it in various ways, including total time spent on state-, district-, school-, and classroom-required tests by content area and grade level.

This visualization tool enables those involved in the assessment system review process to grasp the cumulative impact of assessments on instructional time and the balance among state-mandated, district- or school-adopted, and teacher-required assessments—a critical consideration in refining the assessment calendar.

The Assessments We Need: What the Team Found

The assessment system review team found that district-required writing, math, and science benchmark assessments, administered twice per year, were not aligned with the rigor of the standards and the information was difficult to extract from the data platform. The intended purpose of the benchmarks was to help classroom teachers better target their instruction and move student learning forward. However, the team found that educators did not often access the results and, if they were able to download results, they were not using the data to improve instruction. “So then we ask ourselves, Why are we taking the time out of our instructional minutes to give an assessment, but not look at the data?” 

The team recommended replacing the benchmarks with performance tasks that are completed and reported in the same system as the state test. This way, educators could easily access the results and trust that they were accurate in relation to the rigor of the standards and state performance expectations.

Next: Examining Tests by Grade Level

Looking ahead, the district aims to empower grade-level teams to assess their testing practices. By visualizing the assessments and how they dovetail with their instructional vision, educators can refine their approach, ensuring assessments are meaningful and coherent with curriculum and instruction.

This iterative process distinguishes between assessments useful to educational leaders for program evaluation purposes and assessments useful to classroom teachers for instructional purposes. The goal is to equip decision-makers with the assessment information they need while minimizing the time tests take away from instruction. 

Assessment-Review Advice for Other Districts

Reflecting on their journey, Tara and Bea emphasized the importance of strategic planning and sustained commitment. They urged districts to assemble dedicated teams, clarify objectives, and persevere through the review process to reap its full benefits. Ultimately, they highlighted the transformative power of asking fundamental questions: Why are we doing what we’re doing, and how does it benefit our students?

Want to hear more from Coachella Valley? Watch this video, which captures Tara and Bea answering questions about their reasons for conducting an assessment system review, their process, their learning, and their next steps.

The Assessment System Review materials and resources used in the pilot are now freely available for use by any school or district on CCEE’s webpage and in the Center’s resource library. 

This blog post was drawn from an interview the Center team (Carla Evans, Laura Pinsonneault and Caroline Wylie) conducted with the Coachella Valley Unified School District team (Beatriz Chavez, coordinator of secondary curriculum & instruction, and Tara Hinchen, coordinator of elementary curriculum & instruction).