Schools & Districts CommonLit's Assessment Series Gives Teachers a Clearer Picture of Every Reader
Know where every student stands—and how to think about what comes next
The CommonLit Assessment Series is your school's tool for tracking student reading growth across the year. These benchmark assessments give teachers and administrators a clear, reliable picture of where students stand at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year, so your team always knows where to focus next. They’re easy to use, high quality, and built to turn data into action over the course of a year.
What Is the Assessment Series?
Teachers and administrators need data they can trust. Data that tells them where students are performing relative to grade-level expectations, and that helps them decide what to do next. Too often, that data is hard to access, hard to interpret, or arrives too late to act on.
The Assessment Series includes three tests administered at three points throughout the school year: the Pre-Assessment (beginning of year), the Mid-Year Assessment (middle of year), and the Post-Assessment (end of year). Each test, available for grades 3-12, consists of three reading passages (two informational and one literary) with a set of 28-38 multiple-choice questions.
Immediately after taking each assessment, each student automatically receives a performance category (Below or Approaching Grade Level, On Grade Level, or Above Grade Level) based on end-of-year grade-level expectations. As a result, teachers have a consistent benchmark to return to throughout the year, and administrators can identify trends across classrooms and schools.
Unlocking Student Data
The assessment series provides teachers and administrators with data reports they can begin interpreting to inform instructional planning. Here's what educators can see:
Student performance groups: A chart showing how students are performing compared to grade-level expectations and to their peers.
Performance by standard: A detailed breakdown of each student's overall results and their performance by standard. This chart is best reviewed alongside scaled scores and performance groups, which are the most reliable indicators of student reading comprehension. This report can also be easily downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet.
Growth over time: Because all three assessments use the same scaled score methodology, scores from different tests within one grade level can be directly compared. This gives teachers a consistent benchmark to return to across the year — tracking whether students are moving toward grade-level proficiency over time, not just capturing a single snapshot.
Administrators have access to a dedicated Administrator Data Portal with school- and district-wide reports, making it easy to identify trends and flag students who may need additional support.
Teachers also have access to proctoring tools that allow them to lock, exempt, or submit a student's assessment, giving them control over the testing experience from start to finish.
Getting Started Is Simple
Once your school or district becomes a partner, the CommonLit team will unlock all three assessments for teachers within your school, and from there, teachers can assign and schedule assessments directly through commonlit.org.
Students log into their existing CommonLit accounts to complete assessments, making for an easy and familiar testing experience.
A Note on Test Development and Security
The Assessment Series is built on a rigorous, multi-step development process. Our assessment writing process begins with text curation. We meticulously analyze all of our assessment passages to ensure they are grade-level appropriate and that they are fair for all students.
Once texts are chosen, CommonLit’s assessment team begins drafting items that are rigorous and standards-aligned. After items are drafted, multiple senior reviewers analyze, recommend edits, and norm their edits through a collaborative process. Finally, our team field-tests all our assessments to ensure that they are at the appropriate difficulty level before they’re included in the CommonLit Assessment Series.
New tests are released every summer to keep content fresh and minimize exposure risk. Test security measures include access restricted to verified school email addresses, disabled copy-paste features across the platform, teacher-controlled locking of assessments, and systematic internet monitoring for any leaked content.
CommonLit adheres to industry standards including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA), Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) and the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA), and never uses or sells student data for advertising or marketing.
Bring CommonLit's Assessment Series to Your School or District
Interested in getting rigorous, easy-to-use benchmark assessments at your school or district? Save thousands with CommonLit. Get an affordable quote for your school or district below:
