ASSESSMENT STANDARDS

    PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUCCESS

    Quality assessment provides all students with opportunities for success.

    Quality assessment provides opportunities for success by focusing on the ideas, habits of mind, and capabilities that students have learned. It gives students opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge, capabilities and attitudes in a variety of ways.

    Quality assessment ensures all students opportunities for success by:

    • providing all students expectations for success,
    • providing all students opportunities for choice,
    • supporting each student's opportunity to learn important ideas involving higher-order thinking, and continues their progress in developing mathematics/science literacy,
    • adapting assessments for learners with special needs,
    • providing practice and experience using multiple forms of assessment,
    • providing students with opportunities to display their learning using a variety of response options.

    Quality assessments provide students with a variety of ways to demonstrate their learning. These assessments reflect a belief that all students can succeed and provide avenues for success to occur. They do not function as gatekeepers that prevent some students from access to important mathematics/science. Quality assessments enable students to create rich self-portraits that enhance self-image, lead them to recognize their abilities, and encourage them to continue learning and growing.

    Striving for success for all means that assessment activities and tasks are adapted to overcome, or minimize, the limitations of students with special needs and provide appropriate options for response. Quality assessment tasks consider student needs in the presentation of the tasks and in response options, while continuing to be challenging and focused on important mathematics and science.

    For quality assessments to provide occasions for students to excel, students are given opportunities to understand and practice using various forms of assessment as part of the instructional process. This practice is intended to help students learn to respond effectively by using a particular form of assessment and to provide the feed forward necessary for improvement.