State assessments play an important role in monitoring how well schools and districts serve the needs of all learners. However, they are designed to provide comparable information across a state’s schools and districts, not instructional information at the classroom level or guidance about individual students’ learning.

This brief from the Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability at WestEd is for state and local leaders who want to ensure that their local assessment systems align with local values, priorities, and agreements about what learning should look like. It can help leaders design coherent and equitable assessments that provide meaningful information to support classroom learning and local improvement goals.

The brief describes the eight key elements of a coherent and equitable local assessment system. Such a system is informative, aligned, comprehensive, worthwhile, asset-based, inclusive, and relevant and it encourages students to develop agency over their own learning. Included in the brief are examples of systems that are equitable and coherent and systems that are less so, as well as reflection questions that can be used to determine whether a system is coherent and equitable.