For decades, district assessment departments have been organized around compliance. Their core job is designing and administering benchmarks, crunching test data, and reporting results up the chain to superintendents and the state. This made some sense in the era of No Child Left Behind– and ESSA-driven state accountability systems, where high-stakes tests drove everything.
But with Texas’s HB 8 banning benchmark testing and STAAR practice exams, Louisiana’s LEAP 360 embedding assessments in the curriculum, and Houston ISD’s NES model shifting the focus to daily checks for understanding, the accountability-driven assessment office may need a makeover.
As instructionally supportive assessments emerge as the new trend in progress monitoring, the opportunity to redefine assessment departments as Teaching and Learning Support Departments is here. Administrator support has always been part of the department’s workflow, but what would it look like to fully integrate with instructional coaching, curriculum development, and professional learning departments? Let’s find out.
