Reimagining State Assessment: Inspiration from The Handbook for Assessment in the Service of Learning

I need to confess that I have not completed my reading of the The Handbook for Assessment in the Service of Learning. However, after 10 years managing educational assessment, it didn't take long for the gears in my mind begin to grind again on the idea of reimagining our state assessment systems. This is a topic I've been thinking about for the better part of my career. Take this very first sentence from the introduction of the handbook:

"Pedagogical sciences and practice have long utilized educational assessment and measurement too narrowly. While we have leveraged the capacity of these technologies and approaches to monitor progress, take stock, measure readiness, and hold accountable, we have neglected their capacity to facilitate the cultivation of ability; to transform interests and engagement into developed ability."

When a product, in this case educational assessment systems, fails to improve over time by responding to the changing needs and wants of the user, the product inevitably faces the rising spector of discontent. Dissatisfaction with mandated standardized tests in American education is not new, but it remains persistent. The roots of that dissatisfaction lie in a failure to apply the most basic principles of product improvement. State assessment systems have too often been built to serve accountability and compliance rather than the end users of the system: students, families, and educators. The Handbook for Assessment in the Service of Learning (Volumes I and II) offers a blueprint for change—one that situates assessment as a process of discovery and guidance rather than surveillance and sanction. I highly recommend reading the entire document.

I will be reading it this week as well.

The Global Context: Annual Testing as a U.S. Anomaly

The United States is the only country in the world to mandate academic testing of every child every year (3rd-8th grade and once in high school for ELA and math and once each school level in science). The intent was noble—to ensure that every child’s right to a high-quality public education was protected through transparency and accountability. However, the result has been an assessment system that can exhaust rather than inspire. In contrast, higher-performing education systems in Finland, Estonia, Singapore, Japan, and others test periodically at key points in a student’s journey, using results formatively to adjust instruction, guide supports, and monitor system health.

International comparisons reveal that continuous annual testing is neither necessary nor sufficient for excellence. It may be more useful to compare individual U.S. states—rather than the nation as a whole—to smaller nations or city-states like Singapore, which combine rigorous expectations with targeted, periodic assessment. These systems emphasize feedback loops, teacher judgment, and locally meaningful measures of learning rather than universal, high-stakes testing.

Insights from Assessment in the Service of Learning

Volumes I and II of the Handbook for Assessment in the Service of Learning articulate several foundational principles that could guide the reform of state testing systems:

• Assessment as guidance, not gatekeeping. Assessments should inform next steps for learners, not simply document their past performance.

• Embedded and formative assessment. Assessments can be seamlessly integrated into learning activities, offering continuous feedback without disrupting instruction.

• Personalized measures. Testing should engage on students’ experiences, languages, and contexts, ensuring equity and authenticity.

• Self-assessment and reflection. Students should be active participants in evaluating their growth, developing metacognition and agency.

• Technological integration. Modern assessment systems can leverage data from digital learning environments to personalize feedback in real time.

Together, these principles reflect a future in which testing is no longer something done to students but something done for them—a process of discovery that supports their growth, agency, and aspirations.

Integration into K–12 Assessment Systems: Empowerment vs. Accountability

With the growing emphasis on college and career readiness, states are considering how to integrate career and aptitude assessments into K–12 systems. The key is to do so in a way that empowers students—enhancing self‑knowledge and future planning—without turning these tools into high‑stakes accountability measures.

Rediscovering the Joy and Purpose of Assessment

The Handbook reminds us that assessment should serve learning. That principle also underlies the enduring appeal of assessments people voluntarily take: StrengthsFinder, DISC, ACT WorkKeys, the ASVAB, and others. These tools are not designed to rank or punish; they invite curiosity. They tell us something about ourselves—our strengths, our preferences, our possibilities.

While such assessments would require reframing and age-appropriate adaptation to serve students, their spirit can guide a transformation in how we think about state testing. Imagine if part of a student’s testing experience helped them reflect on what they enjoy, what they value, and what kinds of careers might suit their emerging skills. Such tools should never feed state accountability data systems; rather, they should exist as a service to students and guardians, supporting reflection and dialogue about the future.

Current Practices

Some states already incorporate these assessments. For instance, a number of states administer WorkKeys to high school juniors as one indicator of career readiness. Many also encourage or host the ASVAB Career Exploration Program (voluntary) and require students to complete an Individual Career and Academic Plan (ICAP) that typically includes an interest inventory and/or aptitude measure. These moves acknowledge the value of such tools for guidance. However, when results are tied to accountability ratings or graduation, tensions arise. Making WorkKeys or similar measures de facto required for school performance has led educators to question the marginal value of another test in an already crowded landscape. The risk is that a student‑centered tool (for discovery) becomes a system‑centered metric (for judgment).

Measuring What Makes Schools Work: Integrating Learning-Condition Data into State Systems

One promising model for improving state assessment systems comes from the 5Essentials® framework developed by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Rather than testing content knowledge, 5Essentials measures the organizational health of a school—how well its culture and structures support learning. The survey-based system gathers perceptions from teachers, students, and (optionally) parents across five interrelated domains:

1. Effective Leaders – Principals and administrators who cultivate trust, shared purpose, and instructional focus.

2. Collaborative Teachers – Faculty norms of collegiality, feedback, and continuous professional learning.

3. Involved Families – Family participation and trust in school partnerships.

4. Supportive Environment – Safety, respect, and social-emotional support within the school climate.

5. Ambitious Instruction – Clear, rigorous expectations and engaging pedagogy.

Longitudinal analyses in Chicago Public Schools found that schools strong on at least three of the five domains were roughly ten times more likely to see substantial gains in student learning than those weak on three or more. Improvements in 5Essentials scores also predicted higher attendance, GPA, freshman-on-track rates, and college enrollment—across both low- and high-poverty contexts.

Incorporating a 5Essentials-type measure into a state assessment system would add a vital layer of context—capturing the conditions that enable or constrain student success. While it would not replace academic testing, it could complement it by providing diagnostic insight for continuous improvement. For example, a state could require each district to administer an annual or biennial school-climate and organizational-capacity survey, disaggregated by subgroup, and publish results alongside academic indicators. This would help policymakers and communities interpret test scores within the lived realities of schools.

Designing Assessment Systems that Serve Students and Guardians

In a reimagined model, students and families are treated as the customers of the assessment system. That means designing features they value—timely feedback, actionable insights, and transparency about how results will be used. States could build online portals where families view both academic results and school climate data, alongside personalized guidance tools such as interest surveys or strength profiles. By embedding career readiness and self-knowledge modules within these systems, assessment becomes a mirror for growth rather than a scorecard for punishment.

Policy Recommendations

• Replace annual testing with stage-based assessments. Evaluate students once per educational stage (e.g., Grades 3, 6, 9, and 11) while maintaining optional interim diagnostics for local use.

• Require school climate and culture measures. Mandate biennial administration of validated tools like 5Essentials or state-developed equivalents, ensuring representation from teachers, students, and families.

• Integrate formative career and self-assessment modules. Offer optional, privacy-protected tools (e.g., aptitude, interest, or strengths surveys) to help students reflect on learning and future goals.

• Use results for improvement, not sanction. Treat all non-academic measures as diagnostic, guiding coaching, professional learning, and resource allocation.

• Develop public dashboards that combine multiple indicators. Include climate, engagement, career readiness, and academic data to present a holistic picture of school quality.

• Build continuous improvement loops. Using stakeholder satisfaction feedback, apply a Kano-style cycle where states periodically evaluate whether assessment features meet the needs of students, families, and educators.

When assessments measure what makes schools thrive and when results are shared in ways that inform families and empower educators, testing becomes a net benefit to all. Accountability remains—but it coexists with empathy, flexibility, and human-centered design. The annual state test may one day fade into history, replaced by systems that see every learner not as a datapoint, but as a developing mind and a partner in their own education.

To maximize utility, the data should be framed as formative evidence for local improvement rather than as an accountability ranking. State education agencies could offer professional learning supports and dashboards, helping schools translate 5Essentials-style data into action plans. Over time, pairing such measures with student-level assessments would produce a more complete, human-centered accountability system—one that recognizes that thriving schools depend not only on what students know, but also on the environments in which they learn.

Principles for Empowering Integration

• Make participation useful to the student. Every student should leave with personal insight or an actionable plan. Pair assessments with interpretation—workshops or 1:1 advising—to translate results into course choices, work‑based learning, or postsecondary plans.

• Keep stakes low; use for information, not sanctions. Treat career/aptitude tools as components of planning portfolios or advisory coursework—not as gatekeepers for graduation or school ratings. Begin future‑planning artifacts early (elementary/middle) and let students iteratively refine them over time.

• Choice and personalization. Offer a menu (e.g., Strong Interest Inventory or an alternative profiler; ASVAB and/or strengths survey). Deliver results in student‑controlled portfolios/dashboards that connect profiles to programs of study, credentials, and careers.

• Ensure equity and interpretation support. Vet tools for cultural and linguistic fairness; provide plain‑language guides and multilingual supports. Train counselors/teachers to facilitate exploratory, non‑prescriptive conversations that broaden options instead of narrowing them.

• Separate from evaluative academics. Schedule these experiences in advisory/career seminar contexts (not during high‑stakes testing windows). Do not use results to evaluate teachers or issue A–F grades for schools; position them as student services.

A Stakeholder‑Satisfaction Improvement Cycle (Kano‑Informed)

Drawing on Find a Better Way (Mason, 2018), a feature‑based improvement cycle can sustain assessment reform:

1. Build improvement into policy from the start. Specify regular review intervals, resources, and roles for collecting stakeholder feedback on assessment features (e.g., frequency/length, relevance/utility of results, local control, stress/conditions).

2. Clarify needs. Identify organizational, societal, and user needs; treat students, families, and educators as users whose participation is essential.

3. Elicit motivations & classify features (Kano). Use structured surveys to sort features into Must‑Be, Performance, Attractive, and Reverse‑Performance categories (e.g., shorter testing time; timely, student‑useful reports; optional self‑discovery modules kept private to families).

4. Innovate & iterate. Prioritize improvements that lift Performance features and intentionally create Attractive quality (e.g., guidance‑oriented modules that students want to take). Publicize improvements and re‑survey on a cadence aligned to legislative/policy cycles to track feature migration over time.

This cycle treats assessment as a public product/service whose quality is improved by systematically attending to the user experience—not only compliance.

Conclusion: A Call for Assessment That Inspires

If the purpose of testing is to serve learning, then the U.S. must begin reimagining its assessment systems from the ground up. We can preserve our commitment to equity and accountability while adopting global best practices that emphasize quality over quantity, insight over inspection, and growth over grading. The next era of assessment should help every learner see themselves more clearly and every guardian feel more informed about their child’s potential. Only then can we truly say our assessments are in the service of learning.

References

Brookhart, S. M. (2025). Developing educational assessments to serve learners. In S. G. Sireci, E. M. Tucker, & E. W. Gordon (Eds.), Handbook for assessment in the service of learning, Volume II: Reconceptualizing assessment to improve learning. University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7275/ejm6-se46

Mason, E. C. (2018). Find a better way: A study of parent test refusals of Colorado K–12 state assessments in 2015 and 2016 using a framework based on the Kano Model (Doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado Colorado Springs).— See especially: “A Product/Service Improvement Cycle based on Stakeholder Satisfaction Feedback can be Used to Improve Assessment Systems” (pp. 176–187).

Tucker, E. M., Armour‑Thomas, E., & Gordon, E. W. (Eds.). (2025). Handbook for assessment in the service of learning, Volume I: Foundations for assessment in the service of learning. University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7275/2h95-jf35

Sireci, S. G., Tucker, E. M., & Gordon, E. W. (Eds.). (2025). Handbook for assessment in the service of learning, Volume II: Reconceptualizing assessment to improve learning. University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7275/ejm6-se46