This EdTrust brief looks at how equitable and thoughtfully designed through-year assessments can enhance summative assessment systems to better meet the academic needs of all students. Through-year assessments evaluate students’ knowledge, skills, and progress over the course of the year, thereby providing more timely, meaningful data. This data enables educators to adjust their instruction, assists administrators in making more strategic and equitable decisions about resource allocation, and helps families understand whether and how well their school is meeting their child’s needs.

The brief highlights five things every advocate should know when pushing for an equitable through-year assessment model:

1. Through-year assessments can help promote more equitable opportunities for students.
2. Popular interim assessments can inspire through-year assessment design but have many limitations.
3. Through-year assessments offer several opportunities to address the concerns of families, educators, and administrators about traditional statewide summative assessments.
4. Research suggests that certain components of a through-year assessment can promote student learning, but further study is needed to evaluate the model’s effectiveness.
5. Not all through-year assessments are created equal: States must make thoughtful choices to ensure a through-year assessment can produce more meaningful data.

The brief also includes various recommendations to help advocates effectively make their case for developing strong through-year assessments in their state:

• Establish a vision for a through-year assessment model
• Communicate how various design choices differ in meeting student needs
• Leverage or build upon enabling conditions within the state education agency (SEA)
• Act as a watchdog for stakeholder engagement
• Urge state leaders to hold vendors accountable to their promises
• Ensure that the state allocates funds to develop resources that build stakeholders’ understanding of assessment data
• Require state leaders to conduct an equity-centered impact evaluation of the pilot efforts

Download the Report

Our accompanying resource, Designing Equitable Through-Year Assessments, outlines several technical considerations for creating equitable through-year assessments and provides recommendations on three crucial design decisions for advocates and state administrators.

Check out our other reports in this series on how to improve statewide assessment systems:

• Advocates’ Guide to Demanding Racially and Culturally Inclusive State Assessments
• Making Assessment Reports More Meaningful for Students & Families