Assessment Literacy Matters

Assessments are a key component of an effective learning cycle and a quality academic system. You’ve got to know where kids are in order to determine where they need to go. Schools and districts use a number of assessments – interim, formative, diagnostic, and summative – to inform daily instruction, determine student placement, guide planning, ensure common expectations, and determine whether students are on track in meeting learning goals.

Educators and leaders need to understand how to select the right assessments to meet their purposes, how to understand the results from those assessments, and how to use the results effectively to make informed decisions to benefit students. They also need to ensure alignment across components – and address gaps and redundancies among and between measures.

To do all of that requires a deep knowledge about assessment – what CenterPoint calls “assessment literacy.”

CenterPoint’s assessment team works with educators, leaders, boards, and communities to build assessment literacy to ensure they get the most out of their assessments. CenterPoint’s assessment team provides targeted learning sessions to educators, leaders, boards, and communities to build assessment literacy to ensure they get the most out of their assessments.

Podcast: Becoming Human Using Assessment

What if testing was more human centric and not so scary and indiscriminate? Listen to this discussion about bringing back meaning to assessments through new skills in data and logic that work even in distance learning scenarios.

LeiLani Cauthen interviews CEO Laura Slover and Joey Web, Director of Academic Services, of CenterPoint Education Solutions.

Close Learning Gaps with Assessment Literacy Sessions

Identifying unfinished learning from unprecedented school closures is top of mind for leaders and educators alike.

Virtual assessment literacy workshops will prepare your educators for planning and implementing targeted, effective instruction using assessment data.

Find Out More

Common Questions about Assessments and the Data They Generate

When it comes to making the right instructional decisions to support student growth, schools and districts don’t have time or money to waste. They need high quality assessments – and they need to know how to use them effectively. For instance:

A teacher who wants to measure students’ understanding of the lessons during the week will want to use diagnostic assessments. The data from diagnostic assessments can be used to identify where additional instruction is needed to reinforce student understanding.

A school leader who wants to review how the students in each grade are progressing toward meeting end of year expectations will want to use interim assessments. The data from interim assessments helps identify where additional resources or instructional training may be needed and plan professional learning.

Here are some typical questions we hear in our work across the country:

With so many types of assessments, how do I know which one to use and when?
What makes up a high-quality assessment?
What do all these data mean and how do they connect?
What if one test tells me something different than another test?
How do I use assessment data to guide my daily instruction? To group students? To plan for next month?
How do these data help me predict performance on summative assessments?

Assessment Literacy Training

CenterPoint leads administrators, school leaders, board members, and educators through focused workshops that build assessment literacy and has a lasting impact on teaching and learning.

School and district leaders will be able to:

ensure their educators have a clear understanding of assessment purposes and uses;
identify and select high-quality assessments;
determine and correct assessment systemic alignment;
select the appropriate assessment for each purpose; and
support their educators’ use of data to improve student achievement.

Educators and instructional coaches will be able to:

understand how assessments are designed;
choose the correct assessment to match their instructional goals;
craft quality assessment items;
develop and use rubrics and checklists for scoring; and
use data from assessments to make instructional decisions.

We can work with district and school leaders to customize an assessment literacy training to support a wide variety of needs. All of our sessions can be delivered virtually to groups of all sizes.

Types of Training


Live Video Sessions	Live Recorded Webinar

Multi-day/Full day on-site	Half day on-site

Train the Trainer Virtual	Train the Trainer On-Site

Find out more about our assessment and data literacy workshops.