Learning Points are brief documents describing a single topic related to educational assessment.
MAC’s Learning Points help individuals boost their own learning about assessment and support learning communities seeking to increase assessment literacy among professional educators. Each Learning Point is aligned to Michigan’s Assessment Literacy Standards and describes or defines a key assessment idea or concept.
Assessment Literacy
What do we mean by assessment literacy?
The basics of assessment literacy are described in this Learning Point.
What fundamental understandings are necessary for assessment literacy?
The Learning Point briefly describes the six basic assessment understandings needed by educators.
What types of assessment methods can support student-centered instruction?
This Learning Point describes the link between conceptually rich, student-centered classrooms and performance assessments, which promote the generation of necessary evidence of students’ conceptual understanding.
How performance assessments strengthen the formative assessment process and help promote student-centered instruction
This Learning Point considers the mutually strengthening relationship between student-centered classrooms, the formative assessment process, and performance assessments.
What is ambitious teaching?
This Learning Point defines and describes ambitious teaching, provides historical context for its evolution and the need to incorporate this approach in a modern education to prepare students for their futures.
What is the relationship between ambitious teaching and formative assessment?
This Learning Point describes ambitious and formative assessment as distinct concepts and complimentary practices; when woven together the combination is strong and effective in service of creating agency in the learner.
How do we design assessment systems for modern learning?
This Learning Point summarizes a framework for curriculum elements and assessment principles that address all the learning goals we have for modern learners/21st century learners.
Balanced Assessment Systems
What constitutes a high-quality, comprehensive, balanced assessment system?
This Learning Point provides an overview of the components of a balanced assessment system.
What do we mean by interim/benchmark assessments?
Interim benchmark assessments are described in this Learning Point.
Interim Assessment: What are some key characteristics?
Learn about some key characteristics you should know when selecting interim assessments. Also see "Learning Resource: Purposes for and Essential Characteristics of Interim Assessment".
Learning Resource-Purposes for and essential characteristics of interim assessment
This Learning Resource is a companion chart to the Learning Point, "Interim Assessment: What are some key characteristics?"
What are summative assessments?
This Learning Point describes some key characteristics of summative assessment and describes its role within a balanced assessment system.
What is summative assessment and how can it be used in the classroom?
Classroom-level summative assessments primarily serve the purposes of teachers, students, and families. This Learning Point describes various types of classroom assessment and the decisions they inform.
Performance Assessment – What is it and why is it useful?
Performance assessment is defined, and its use described, in this Learning Point.
Performance assessments in the visual arts classroom
This Learning Point describes how performance can be used in the arts.
What are diagnostic assessments?
Diagnostic tests are defined, and their use described, in this Learning Point.
Start with purpose when choosing assessments
This Learning Point describes the basic steps in choosing an assessment for use in schools.
What is collaborative scoring? Why can it be so valuable?
This Learning Point outlines how collaborative scoring is a means to assuring that student work is judged reliably and the training and act can be valuable professional learning and support more use of performance assessment.
How do we design assessment systems for modern learning?
This Learning Point summarizes a framework for curriculum elements and assessment principles that address all the learning goals we have for modern learners/21st century learners.
What do we mean by "equitable grading"?
This Learning Point raises awareness of how our common, century-old grading practices perpetuate achievement disparities, and describes the ways teachers and schools might move to more equitable grading practices.
The role of assessment in support of a multi-tiered system of support
This Learning Point will help to explain the critical role of a balanced assessment system and personnel that are highly skilled in the use of this assessment system to support effective implementation of multi-tiered system of support (MTSS).
What types of assessment methods can support student-centered instruction?
This Learning Point describes the link between conceptually rich, student-centered classrooms and performance assessments, which promote the generation of necessary evidence of students’ conceptual understanding.
How do authentic assessments deepen learning?
This Learning Point draws from cognitive science to describe how authentic assessments help students to embed their learning into long-term memory and why authentic assessments are meaningful to students.
What is the difference between performance assessment and project-based learning?
This Learning Point defines both project-based learning and performance assessments, and the describes the differences between these two methods.
Pre-test vs. pre-assessment: Why the distinction matters in a balanced assessment system
This Learning Point defines both pre-test and pre-assessment and describes the distinction between the two processes.
Formative Assessment
What do we mean by formative assessment?
Formative assessment, as defined in the Michigan FAME program, is described in this Learning Point.
Formative assessment(s) or formative assessment? The "s" makes a difference.
This Learning Point describes the misconception that results when using the term “formative assessmentS” to describe the formative assessment PROCESS.
What conditions are necessary for successful implementation of formative assessment?
This Learning Point summarizes the conditions necessary for effective use of formative assessment practices in a classroom, as originally described in a white paper by Margaret Heritage, Nancy Gerzon, and Marie Mancuso
What is learner agency?
This Learning Point defines the term learner agency and explains how it is achieved through practices used with students in Assessment For Learning practices.
Planning: What role does it play in the formative assessment process?
This Learning Point describes one of the elements of formative assessment as defined in the Michigan FAME program.
What are learning targets?
This Learning Points provides a summary of how learning targets can be used to enhance instruction and student learning
What are learning progressions?
This Learning Point describes what a learning progression is and why it is integral to formative assessment.
Models of proficient achievement: Why are they important?
This Learning Point explains why and how models of proficient achievement are important in the formative assessment process to support learners
Prior knowledge: Why is activating it important in the formative assessment process?
This Learning Point explains why and how activating prior knowledge is important to the formative assessment process.
What is gathering evidence of student understanding?
This Learning Point outlines how to elicit evidence of student understanding of expressed learning targets using three instructional routines during delivery of lessons and the students role in the process.
What are teacher questioning strategies?
This Learning Point explains questioning strategies as a powerful tool for teachers and students to collect and use information about student understanding in order to move learning forward.
What is skillful use of questions?
This Learning Point examines the skillful use of questions as a means to elicit evidence of student understanding in the formative assessment process.
What is formative feedback? Why is feedback from the teacher important?
This Learning Point indicates formative feedback is a high impact strategy on student learning and achievement and an essential component in the formative assessment process.
What is feedback from peers?
This Learning Point indicates peers can provide & receive effective formative feedback to move their learning forward.
What is student self-assessment?
This Learning Point identifies five things teachers have to teach students for them to effectively engage in self-assessment.
What are adjustments to teaching?
This Learning point describes the ongoing changes that teachers make to adjust teaching and learning and based on evidence in order to improve students'achievement of intended learning outcomes.
What are adjustments to learning?
This Learn Point outlines the process a teacher uses in which students receive feedback that they can use to make adjustments in their learning tactics and set goals to improve their current and future work.
Online formative assessment strategies that help students with disabilities
Effective use of the formative assessment process can improve learning for all students, and it is particularly helpful for students with disabilities. And it can be especially important for distance learning, which sometimes can feel to students like an endless “to-do” list with no particular goal in mind.
Assessment in the Disciplines
What are Next Generation Science Standards?
The Next Generation Science Standards are described in this Learning Point.
What impact will Next Generation Science Standards have on assessment?
The impact of the Next Generation Science Standards on science assessment is described in this Learning Point.
Disciplinary literacy and student-centered instruction and assessment in secondary English language arts
This Learning Point considers the intersection between the Essential Instructional Practices for Disciplinary Literacy in Secondary ELA 1, or Literacy Essentials, and MAC’s Components of Equitable Assessment to offer key considerations for student-centered instruction and assessment of disciplinary literacy in secondary ELA.
Disciplinary literacy in mathematics and the need to develop mathematical reasoning
Mathematical literacy depends on developing mathematical reasoning–the ability to use what a student already knows to develop solutions for what they do not yet know (IES 2025). This Learning Point suggests that the focus in math classes on algorithms as answer-finding tools results in a dearth of the mathematical reasoning ability that defines a mathematician.
Accountability
Proficiency and Growth: What's the difference?
This Learning Point describes the difference between proficiency and growth in student achievement.
Measuring Student Growth: More than just choosing a model
This Learning Point describes some of the nuances of calculating and using growth scores in educator evaluation.
How do English learners participate in state assessment?
This Learning Point describes two ways English learners participate in state assessment and how the results of these assessments are intended to be used.
How do students with disabilities participate in state and district assessments?
This Learning Point describes why students with disabilities participate in state assessment and how. And outlines the requirements in IDEA.
Technical Considerations
What's in a name? How the ALN uses key assessment terms
This Learning Point describes several key assessment technical terms in non-technical language.
Reliability and validity: How do these concepts influence accurate student assessment?
This Learning Point briefly describes two concepts central to accurate student assessment: reliability (refers to the consistency of test scores) and validity (refers to the degree that a text measures what it purports to measure).
Criterion- and norm-referenced score reporting: What is the difference?
This Learning Point describes two ways in which scores from educational tests can be reported: criterion-referenced (compares a student's raw score to a predetermined standard) or norm-referenced (compares a student's scores to those of other test-takers).
Grading for learning: Guidelines for supporting student success
This Learning Point outlines 8 guidelines recommended by Ken O'Connor necessary to shift from traditional grading practices to those that align with standards and support learning.
How might collaboration create a state of assessment literacy?
This Learning Point describes how the Assessment Learning Network can promote collaboration on assessment learning.
How can stealth assessment in games measure and support learning?
This Learning Point defines the concept of "stealth assessment" and describes how it can be used to embed ongoing formative assessment opportunities deeply into a game (or other engaging digital learning environment), blurring the distinction between learning and assessment.
Assessment and Social-Emotional Learning
What is social and emotional learning (SEL)?
This Learning Point defines SEL as an interrelated set of cognitive, affective and behaviorial competencies and explains the importance of attending to skills necessary to develop and maintain social and emotional skills to learning environments.
Where does SEL assessment fit in the building and district assessment system?
This Learning Point suggests that implementation science, and continuous improvement are important to realize an SEL vision for a district. The LP also points out cautions for how SEL assessment information should and should not be used.
How can educators assess social and emotional learning?
This Learning Point speaks to determining the purpose and appropriate use of assessment methods applied to student social-emotional competencies.
How do instruction and assessment contribute to academic confidence in learners?
This Learning Point, excerpted from Rick Stiggins' book, Give Our Students the Gift of Confidence (Corwin, 2023), describes the context of teaching and learning in American classrooms, its impact on the emotional dynamics of learner success and failure, and how those dynamics affect each learner’s developing confidence or self-doubt.