Fourth grade teacher Frank Salinas successfully had his students complete an assessment during distance learning in spring 2020. In a video, he shares his strategies and offers clear steps for delivering an at-home Diagnostic that gets good, useable data.

Setting the right individual growth goals for each student in the 2020–2021 school year shouldn’t be on educators’ list of tough problems. From our perspective, each student should have a goal that is both realistic and ambitious. This year, more than any other, students will need big goals that help make up for some of the disruption they experienced in spring 2020.

Schools that choose to assess students at home during the 2020–2021 school year will need to determine how they are going to proctor their diagnostics. Live proctoring with Zoom is a one possibility. With solid planning and great communication, Zoom proctoring can help educators collect important data about students’ learning needs.

Schools that delivered at-home assessments in spring 2020 have much to teach educators who will assess from home in fall 2020. Here, we share Curriculum Associates’ research team’s findings and resulting tips for back to school.

What is the right length for a student assessment? The simple answer is: as long as is necessary for the test to provide the right data that is of sufficient quality to meet the wide variety of needs of teachers and administrators.