Interim Assessments: Striking the Balance between Insight and Instruction

Teachers and families want answers—real ones—beyond percentile rankings and grade-level labels. They also want to know: What does my student understand? What should they do next to move forward in their learning journey?

That’s where interim assessments come in. Done right, they deliver timely, actionable data without derailing instruction. But finding the right balance between minimizing learning interruptions and getting reliable and actionable student data can be tricky.

Not All Interim Assessments Are Created Equal

If an interim assessment doesn’t help you teach better, it’s not doing its job. Afterall, that’s why we need them throughout the year: so we can determine where students need support and address those areas of need.

Instructionally useful assessments go beyond surface-level scores like “on grade level” or “60th percentile.” They pinpoint which skills students have mastered and which ones need work. As education researcher John Hattie puts it: “To use data for instruction, teachers need more specificity.”

That means assessments should:

• Deliver data at the right grain size. You need to know if a student needs support with fractions—not just that they’re “below grade level.” Broad domain coverage matters.
• Use criterion-referenced results. Comparing students to grade-level expectations (not just their peers) helps you see who’s on track and who needs support.
• Have a tailored approach. Once a student proves they know a skill, the assessment should move on to test other skills.
• Support growth goal setting grounded in research. Goals should be realistic, ambitious, and based on actual learning trajectories and individual students’ performance.

Balancing Efficiency and Precision

Short tests may save time, but at what cost? If an assessment is too brief, it can miss key insights. And if the data isn’t reliable, it’s not worth the time spent testing the students. As Hattie warns: “What you gain in time, you lose in coverage and accuracy.”

The ideal interim assessment is:

• Long enough to yield reliable, valid, actionable data at a useful grain size
• Short enough to protect instructional time
• Smart enough to minimize fatigue and maximize insight

How i-Ready Inform Strikes the Right Balance

Our assessment design team—backed by top technical advisors—designed i-Ready Inform to be both efficient and effective by offering:

• Broad domain coverage. We include enough items in each domain to ensure reliable data teachers can act on.
• Complex reading passages. To truly assess comprehension, we use passages that challenge students appropriately.
• Adaptive test flow. Once a student shows mastery in a skill, we stop testing it. That means less redundancy and more relevance.

What to Look for in an Interim Assessment

When choosing an assessment for your students, ask yourself:

• Does it provide data at sufficient granularity to help teachers best support students?
• Does it provide criterion-referenced data, showing how students measure up to grade-level expectations?
• Are growth benchmarks based on both average student performance as well as what it takes to reach grade-level expectations?
• Are there enough items per domain to support reliable scores?
• Are the results easy to interpret and use for instructional planning, grouping, and communication?
• Does it offer recommendations on what to do and link to high-quality instructional materials to help?
• Does it respect instructional time and student stamina?

Using Interim Assessment Data to Drive Instruction

Teachers are experts in instruction, and they’ve told us what kind of tools they need. When assessments provide clear, specific, and reliable data, you can:

• Target instruction to individual needs using granular data about what students know and can do and where they need additional support
• Set ambitious but realistic goals based on criterion-referenced benchmarks
• Monitor progress and adjust instruction as needed
• Communicate clearly with families and colleagues

As Hattie reminds us: “The more precise the results, the more precise the instruction.” That’s the power of a well-designed interim assessment: an assessment that supports learning, not disrupts it.

Want to learn more about what's coming for i-Ready Inform in school year 2026–2027? Review the research evidence behind assessment reliability, and learn how the i-Ready adaptive assessment can drive growth for your students and empower your teachers.