Assessment Services

From form design to standards alignment to analytics, our experts provide states and districts with comprehensive services to design and support assessment programs. We work as your partners, so your needs and objectives inform the solutions we design. Working together, we will help you meet your goals for student achievement.

Blueprint Services

  • Your test blueprint is critical to ensuring a quality assessment. CenterPoint experts are here to ensure your assessment has the strong foundation it needs. To create a quality test blueprint, we start with your academic standards and learning objectives. CenterPoint staff will work collaboratively with you to clarify the assessment’s purpose, identify student data objectives, and determine the standards that best address your assessment requirements. Through the use of our proven and highly innovative assessment protocols, we guide the design and development of a quality blueprint that is tightly aligned to your instructional and assessment goals.

     

    We can help on any aspect of the development process, from planning and development, to review and maintenance.

  • Quality test items are key to a strong assessment. What defines quality? Items must be aligned to the content standards, construct relevant, and free from bias. This ensures all test-takers have fair and equal opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and skills reliably.

     

    The CenterPoint team has years of expertise in developing a variety of test items for a wide spectrum of purposes, ranging from standard multiple-choice and open-ended constructed response questions to technology-enhanced items and performance-based tasks. Our experts can develop items and test content for you or work to build a collaborative development process with your team. The assessments we produce will align to your requirements and specific state standards or the Common Core State Standards, and deliver a balance of items and item types to support high-, medium-, or low-stakes assessment needs.

     

    In addition, we will work with you to identify your needs and the information you expect your assessment program to have. We will develop a blueprint and then support you in making decisions around test design including:

    • Item Selection: item development and facilitation of first and second content review, bias and sensitivity review, expert editorial review, data review
    • Delivery Mode: paper, online, technology-based
    • Stakes: high, low, medium
    • Measured Skills: basic skills, content knowledge, applied knowledge, critical thinking, etc.
    • Scoring Mechanism: machine scored, hand scored, combination
  • Quality assessments start with quality blueprints and forms design. Forms should be of appropriate complexity – and should measure the depth and breadth of the standards. A strong forms design process will result in reliability, measurement equity, and appropriate rigor.

     

    CenterPoint will work with you to build consistent and fair assessment forms to help you ensure the comparability and reliability of results. Our experts can help you through all phases of design–from the initial steps where you create assessment specifications to finalizing and editing test delivery forms. Or we can review existing forms to ensure alignment and quality. Our goal: High quality assessments that are reliable and fair.

  • Quality aligned assessments are the guarantor of effective standards implementation. Aligned assessments work as tools to enhance teaching and learning and help ensure that every individual is on a path to success. By measuring what students know and are able to do — and highlighting potential next steps for instructional choices —educators can make sure students are prepared for post-secondary opportunities. Quality, aligned assessments also provide teachers and families with timely information to identify students who are falling behind as well as those students who are excelling and ready for more challenging work and enrichment.

     

    CenterPoint services give states and districts strategies and protocols to ensure aligned, high-quality assessments. CenterPoint experts will review your assessments and guide your staff through the alignment process.

  • The best reports deliver reliable information in easy-to-read formats to inform teaching and learning. A central part of our work is designing reporting solutions that deliver actionable data that educators and parents can use to benefit student learning. Our innovative reporting solutions include the information that is most needed to inform decision-making, with formats that allow for quick analysis of that information. In addition, our CenterPoint experts are available to collaborate on the design of custom reports and data analytics to help you maximize the benefits of your current assessments.

  • At their foundation, assessments are measurement tools that provide information about students’ knowledge and skills. CenterPoint’s psychometric services ensure that the information provided from your assessments and the associated claims made about student abilities are valid, reliable, and fair. CenterPoint provides technical assistance to districts and states at every stage of assessment development to ensure that their assessments deliver reliable and valid information about students’ progress toward college and career readiness.

     

    Because states and districts have varying needs, we tailor our assistance to help you meet your specific assessment goals around content and complexity. We also provide guidance about how to structure assessments—whether summative, interim, diagnostic, or a full suite—to support meaningful claims of predictability and comparability. Our research experts also are available to help you to test hypotheses to continually improve your assessments.

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