What About Interim Assessments?

Responding to the No Child Left Behind law, more and more companies, states, and districts have been creating interim assessments to help teachers and schools identify areas of strengths and weaknesses and create instructional strategies for targeted students.

Drawing on extensive interview and observation data from nine schools in two districts, a recent study co-authored by Margaret Goertz, Leslie Nabors Oláh, and Matthew Riggan, gave these assessments mixed reviews. The study, which focused on teachers' use of interim assessment data in elementary school mathematics, showed that interim assessments linked to the curriculum did help teachers decide what content to re-teach and to whom. This practice was facilitated by school and district expectations that assessment results would be used to inform instruction, a high-quality information management system, time to re-teach content, instructional supports for students, and professional supports for teachers.

The evidence was limited, however, that interim assessments changed how teachers approached instruction. Changes to teachers' instructional practices depended on their capacity to interpret assessment data and their knowledge of mathematics for teaching. The report includes recommendations for the design of interim assessments, support for their use to improve instruction, and future research.

From Testing to Teaching: The Use of Interim Assessments in Classroom Instruction is a publication of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.