Teachers and school and district leaders make high-stakes instructional decisions with assessment data every day. They use it to:
- Group students for instruction
- Identify students in need of intervention or enrichment
- Measure growth over time
- Evaluate curriculum effectiveness
- Set school and district goals
But how often do we stop to ask an important question: Can we actually trust the data we’re using? That’s the central question explored in our white paper “When your data counts, can you count on your data?” The paper takes a close look at what makes assessment data trustworthy and how MAP® Growth™ is an assessment you can count on.
“Good enough” assessment data isn’t good enough
As Tina Federico, principal at James H. Metzgar Elementary School in New Alexandria, Pennsylvania, and MAP Growth partner notes in the video below, “We are making decisions about children’s futures. We’re preparing them to do things and go out in the world and have jobs that aren’t even invented yet.”
A high-quality assessment, then, should do more than generate scores. As noted in the white paper, trustworthy assessment data should help educators:
- Measure student progress accurately
- Monitor understanding over time
- Guide interventions and enrichment
- Inform whole-class, small-group, and independent instruction
- Support strategic planning at the school and district level
But those outcomes are only possible if the data itself is dependable. Without accurate, actionable insights, educators risk making instructional decisions based on incomplete—or misleading—information.
To help schools evaluate assessment quality, the white paper focuses on four essential characteristics of trustworthy data:
- Precision
- Validity
- Objectivity
- Reliability
Precision matters more than you might think
Precision is critical in assessment. High-quality assessments should use:
- A consistent measurement scale
- Stable comparisons across grades and seasons
- Updated norming studies that reflect current student populations
Because MAP Growth uses the RIT scale across grade levels and relies on national norms, educators can compare growth from:
- Fall to spring
- Year to year
- Grade to grade
Questions to ask about your current assessments
As you think about your current assessment solution, consider:
- Does your assessment use a stable scale over time?
- Are norming studies updated regularly?
- Does the data accurately reflect your student population?
Valid assessments measure what students actually know
Assessments should also measure what they’re intended to measure—and nothing else. For example, if students are being assessed on American mountain ranges, questions unrelated to that content don’t provide meaningful insight into student understanding.
To support validity, strong assessments should include:
- Thorough review cycles
- Content experts
- Evidence-centered design
- Statistical analysis of item performance
MAP Growth meets all of these requirements.
Questions to ask about your current assessments
As you evaluate assessment tools, consider:
- What is the intended purpose of the assessment?
- Do results provide actionable insights for teachers?
- What does student performance on the assessment actually tell you?
Objectivity supports fairness and equity
Trustworthy data must also be objective. In practice, that means:
- Assessment content should be culturally relevant
- Administration should minimize outside influence
- Scoring should remain consistent and unbiased
MAP Growth is:
- Standards aligned
- Curriculum agnostic
- Computer adaptive
- Automatically scored
MAP Growth content undergoes sensitivity reviews to support equity and developmental appropriateness.
Questions to ask about your current assessments
When thinking about objectivity in assessment, ask the followoing:
- Could scores vary depending on who administers the assessment?
- Are assessments administered consistently?
- Does the content undergo sensitivity reviews?
These questions can help educators think critically about fairness in both testing and instructional decision-making.
Reliability is what makes growth data meaningful
Reliability refers to the consistency of assessment results over time. Reliable assessments like MAP Growth should provide stable insights:
- Across test forms
- Across testing windows
- Across groups of students
This consistency is especially important when data is used to:
- Group students
- Identify interventions
- Monitor progress
- Make long-term instructional decisions
Reliability depends heavily on rigorous assessment development and statistical processes like equating, which ensures different versions of an assessment are comparable in difficulty.
Questions to ask about your current assessments
We encourage educators to ask:
- Are different forms of the assessment comparable?
- Does the assessment shift drastically from year to year?
- Does the provider prioritize consistency in content design?
Learn more
Read “When your data counts, can you count on your data?” to learn more about the roles of precision, validity, objectivity, and reliability in high-quality assessments like MAP Growth. We also encourage you to download our checklist “The essential 11: How to guage an assessment solution” to get a better sense for whether your assessment has the coverage, innovative features, and accessibility tools and capabilities your school or district deserves.
