Schools & Districts CommonLit’s Assessment Series Can Provide a Preview for High Stakes End-of-Year Exams

Imagine this…it’s springtime, and your school is in full-on test prep mode. Teachers have spent massive amounts of time and energy making sure students are well-equipped to perform at their highest levels. Students are feeling prepared and ready to conquer their state’s end-of-year assessments. When testing season’s over, your staff feels like it went well and another school year is in the books.

Fast forward to results time. You take a deep breath and open the email from the state or district with your school’s scores. Your jaw drops when you see the test didn’t actually “go well” at all. Your school scores are not where you expected them to be, and it’s an unpleasant shock not just for you but for your entire school community.

Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, your school can avoid this spring time testing surprise with CommonLit’s Assessment Series benchmark exams.

CommonLit’s Assessment Series is a standards-aligned benchmark exam set for grades 3-12 that features both literary and non-fiction reading passages along with 25+ multiple choice questions. The Assessment Series includes 3 benchmark assessments for year-round data collection, and results on the exams are available immediately after students take the test.

Preview Potential Student Performance Levels

In two exciting new studies out of New York and Florida, researchers found a strong and positive correlation between students’ performance on the CommonLit Assessment Series benchmarks and their ultimate end-of-year state scores. 

In the New York study, LearnPlatform by Instructure, an independent evaluation group for edtech products evaluated student data from the spring of 2022. They looked at test results from two middle schools in New York City that both receive Title I funding and feature a demographically diverse student body. In reviewing students’ scores, LearnPlatform found a positive correlation between both the beginning-of-year (r = 0.60) and end-of-year (r = 0.56) CommonLit assessments and the New York State end-of-year tests. These promising findings are extremely positive and show the effectiveness of CommonLit’s Assessment Series in gauging how students may perform on critical end-of-year-tests. 

The second study was done in Alachua County, Florida, in the spring of 2023 and was conducted by researchers at CommonLit. The team looked into students’ performance on the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) ELA test in connection with their CommonLit Assessment Series test.  

These researchers studied a group of 6-8th graders who were racially diverse and had a 40% level of low-income students. The results in Florida show an even higher correlation overall (r = .71) between students’ scores on the Assessment Series and the FAST end-of-year exam. A correlation of .71 overall correlation is considered substantial and indicates that there was high similarity in how students scored on the two tests. The findings suggest that CommonLit’s Assessment Series benchmark exams can give educators beneficial insights into students’ skills as they prepare for high stakes end-of-year tests.

Know Where You Stand with CommonLit’s Assessment Series

Thinking back to the initial “getting your test scores” scenario, wouldn’t it be better to know where your students stand before the test and use CommonLit’s effective literacy tools to help increase their proficiency levels throughout the year? It’s possible with CommonLit.

Reach out today to learn more about partnering with CommonLit to bring the Assessment Series and our effective CommonLit 360 curriculum to your school.