Skip to content
Aurora Institute

Report

Measuring Forward: Emerging Trends in K-12 Assessment Innovation

Author(s): The Aurora Institute, The Center for Assessment, C!E, the Center for Innovation in Education, Envision Learning Partners, The Great Schools Partnership, KnowledgeWorks

Organization(s): Aurora Institute, Center for Assessment, KnowledgeWorks, the Center for Innovation in Education, Envision Learning Partners, The Great Schools Partnership

Issue(s): Issues in Practice, How to Get Started, Commit to Equity, Evaluate Quality, Rethink Instruction, Create Balanced Systems of Assessments, Learn Lessons from the Field, Activate Student Agency, Engage Community, Build Balanced Systems of Assessments

Launch Site


A significant movement is underway across the nation to design K-12 assessment systems that better equip stakeholders to provide an equitable and excellent education to each child.

While some of these innovations emerged before the pandemic, the massive disruption to instruction fueled a new urgency to rethink the potential of assessments to drive better teaching and learning. States and communities are working together to create more balanced systems of assessment that better support instruction while still providing the information necessary to inform policy and resource decisions.

There is much to learn from the ideas emerging across the nation – particularly where states are trying to innovate despite limitations of federal policy. The insights and innovations emerging from this work have the potential to cast a new vision for K-12 assessment in this country.