High-quality, comprehensive, and timely information about what students know and can do is critical to ensuring that schools and families can prepare each and every student for success in school, college, careers, and life.

No single assessment or piece of student work can provide the robust information needed to inform teaching, learning, and supports, as well as public accountability and continuous improvement of education systems through families, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

A high-quality system of assessments can facilitate this by providing aligned and coherent information from a variety of assessments about students’ college and career readiness—maximizing efficiency while reducing duplication, in a timely and rich enough manner to inform instruction, student self-direction in learning, and accountability. State and district leaders at the forefront of designing, implementing, and overseeing assessment efforts can use these ten principles as guidance as they evolve the current array of assessments into a high-quality system of assessments.

The following groups and organizations aim to set a new precedent with these principles:

2Revolutions; Achieve; Alliance for Excellent Education; Heidi Andrade, EdD, Associate Professor, Educational Psychology and Methodology, University at Albany School of Education; Center for Collaborative Education; Center for Curriculum Redesign; The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning; David T. Conley, PhD, Professor and Director, Center for Educational Policy Research, University of Oregon, President, EdImagine Education Counsel; Envision Learning Partners; Great Schools Partnership; The Foundation for Excellence in Education; iNACOL; JFF; KnowledgeWorks; Learning Forward; Learning Policy Institute; MHA Labs; National Association of State Boards of Education; National Center for Learning Disabilities; PAIRIN; Teaching Matters; Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education