Conversations about standards and rigor abound in Fresno Unified School District. Learn more about our classroom assessment solutions that empower student growth.
Interim assessments provide in-depth checkpoints for measuring the progress of student learning. In addition, these assessments can help identify systemic trends and issues, inform data-driven instructional decisions, guide targeted interventions, and support differentiated instruction. Customized assessments deliver even greater insights since their measures are aligned to a district’s standards, scope, and sequence. In 2023, Fresno Unified School District, the third largest district in California, sought out partners that could help educators effectively design and deliver customized interim assessments.
For years, Fresno Unified School District had tried different iterations of interim assessments. However, the district had encountered several challenges. For example, some assessments consumed a great deal of time and weren’t aligned to the district’s standards. Other assessments weren’t aligned to the district’s scope and sequence and were also publicly available, making it easy for students to simply look for the answers instead of mastering course content. In 2023, Fresno USD began working with Cognia and the assessment platform EdCite to supply teachers with standards-aligned assessments built around the district’s scope and sequence. These customized assessments were designed to accurately reflect the content that students had learned within the relevant quarter of the school year. As a result, the assessments allowed for data-driven instructional decisions, helping educators fine-tune instructional strategies and adjust curricula to better address standards. Going forward, Fresno USD plans to use interim assessment results to identify and expand the use of highly effective instructional strategies. The district will also work with Cognia to determine the data’s predictability with regard to end-of-year assessments.