At a recent Collaboration Network for the Indiana Literacy Cadre, we discussed the pivotal role of assessments in the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) process. Our session, led by Tracy Hastings, the Executive Director of Education and Early Literacy Initiatives from the Ivy Tech Community College, was a massive support for understanding the different types of assessments and their role. We discovered that assessments are not just tools for evaluating students but also for guiding the next steps in instruction.

One of the resources she shared with us is this chart:

LD@school, a project of the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario, created the chart. What I love is that it breaks down the different types of assessments and their uses. As a reminder, assessments are about more than just evaluating a student. They are also tools that teachers should use to help guide the next steps in instruction.

Let’s examine each assessment type and its uses, starting with Universal Screeners. These assessments are typically used three times per year (beginning, middle, and end) to identify students or systems that are at risk. These brief assessments measure a student’s performance on a standardized scale. They often give us scores in a percentile range and are given to all students. Screeners can be used to help catch students who are struggling early. One misconception about universal screeners is that the data may be used to help us group students with similar scores for an intervention. The problem is that a Universal Screener often checks various skills, and two students with similar scores have very different needs for intervention. You can think of the universal screener as being like a blood pressure or temperature check. These might tell a doctor that something is wrong, but not what is wrong. When planning tiered interventions for students, you need more information than just the universal screener. Universal screeners can also help identify some potential issues with the core curriculum to ensure that it meets the needs of all students. Our district uses DIBELS and NWEA MAP assessments as universal screeners, although other districts might use Acadience, Aimsweb, FastBridge, or easyCBM.

As I said, the Universal Screener may give us an idea that a student is at risk, but that’s not enough information to know how to solve that problem. Just like how your doctor might do more tests if your blood pressure or temperature is too high or too low, when a Universal Screener tells us that a student is struggling, we next need to do some Diagnostic Assessments to learn more about the child’s needs. A diagnostic will help us to pinpoint specific areas of difficulty. We only use these assessments with students who are at risk to help us identify what the problem is and what intervention or differentiated instruction would best support the learner. Sometimes, we might be tempted to give all the diagnostics to all our students to know more about them. The problem is that it would take too much time from our Tier 1 instruction to do this. If a school’s Tier 1 instruction is where it needs to be, we should only see about 20% or less of our students falling in the at-risk category.

Recently, I’ve been having a lot of conversations about making sure that what we do to support our learners in Tier 2 or Tier 3 is making sure that we are in alignment – meaning that the needs of the child and where they fall in the progression of skills are in alignment with the intervention or differentiated instruction. That way, we know that we are meeting the needs of the child in front of us. Based on the diagnostic, you may find that two students with very similar scores on the Universal Screener have vastly different needs once you do the diagnostic assessments. We’ve been using the CORE Phonics Survey, the LETRS Spelling Assessment, and the PAST in our building. Other diagnostics might include the Really Great Reading Phonological Awareness Survey or the Acadience Comprehension, Fluency, and Oral Language Diagnostic.

Two more types of assessments are considered assessments for learning. First, there’s progress monitoring. These assessments are generally given weekly or bi-weekly and help track student progress and the effectiveness of interventions. Since they are given regularly, they can allow teachers to adjust interventions or increase the intensity of support quickly. If we find students have made progress, we might gradually reduce the intervention or shift to a different intervention that moves them along the learning progression. The last assessment for learning I will discuss here is formative. These assessments are what we use to have ongoing feedback during instruction. This might include things like quizzes, discussions, and exit tickets. These assessments allow us to make sure our Tier 1 instruction is effective for all our learners.

I wanted to dig into assessments today because we must understand the reason for and value of each of the various types of assessments for learning. As educators, we must be prepared to use multiple tools to identify what is causing students to struggle and how well our interventions or instruction meets their needs. Hopefully, this post will provide you with a better understanding of the different types of assessments which in turn will help you find better alignment in your MTSS process. If you don’t know what may be available in your district, there should be people you could turn to for support. In our building, the literacy coach is an excellent resource. If you don’t have a literacy coach, a school psychologist might be another person to help you understand how you might best support your learners. By utilizing assessments these various assessments, you can create a data-informed MTSS framework that meets the various needs of all students.

So again, let’s go back to the analogy of the visit to the doctor’s office:

• Universal Screeners: The things they do at every appointment for every patient, check you blood pressure and temperature, use the oximeter to measure pulse and oxygen saturation, etc. These things may be a sign of general health, or a sign of a potential problem.
• Diagnostic: When the doctor notices a problem, they may order some additional tests. Things like an EKG, or a blood test, will give the doctor additional information to help identify the problem.
• Formative: These are the check-ups along the way after you’ve been given a treatment plan. Your doctor might schedule a few follow-ups to see how things are going.

Have you had previous experiences with these various types of assessments? What have you noticed? How have diagnostics helped you improve your support for students? Let us know in the comments below!