CommonLit Archive CommonLit's Assessment Series Empowers Schools with Actionable Data

Three benchmark assessments for grades 3–12 available to track & monitor student progress at the school and district level.

CommonLit is proud to offer the CommonLit Assessment Series to folks who purchase our School Essentials PRO package. These assessments are easy-to-use, high quality, and affordable. They also provide educators with immediately actionable data.

With this new product for grades 3–12, teachers can administer up to three specialized assessments throughout the course of the school year that each include three grade-level reading passages and 20+ multiple choice questions.

In this blog post, we’ll highlight the key benefits of the CommonLit Assessment Series:

Easy-to-Use Assessments

After a school or district partners with CommonLit, our team will provide a personalized onboarding process.

CommonLit will work with schools to find the best rostering solution for their team. CommonLit currently recommends that districts roster classes via Clever or Google Classroom.

Then, CommonLit’s team will unlock the Pre-Assessment, Mid-Year Assessment, and Post-Assessment to teachers within the school. The assessment can then be administered directly through CommonLit’s website, making for an easy and familiar testing experience.

screenshot of CommonLit's assessment series

After the Pre, Mid, or Post-Assessment is sent to students, they can easily log into their CommonLit account to complete the assessment. Teachers also have access to proctoring tools that allow them to lock or pause a student’s assessment.

screenshot of a CommonLit text
A sample assessment from CommonLit’s Assessment Series

High Quality Assessment Questions

We know that it’s critical for teachers to receive data that they can trust to guide instruction throughout the school year. That’s why our team utilizes a thorough process to ensure that the CommonLit Assessment Series produces valid and reliable data.

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 not at risk of introducing racial, ethnic, economic, or gender bias.

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.

Actionable Data for Teachers and Administrators

When teams purchase CommonLit School Essentials or School Essentials PRO, teachers receive access to three specialized assessments. The first assessment is a Pre-Assessment that allows teachers to collect baseline data on their students. Teachers will then have the opportunity to assign a Mid-Year Assessment that can be used to identify student progress and learning gaps. Finally, teachers will have access to a Post-Assessment that will provide comprehensive data on the growth that students have made throughout the year.

As soon as students complete each assessment, teachers receive immediate access to actionable data reports that they can use to inform instruction. With the chart below, teachers can easily see how their students are performing compared to their grade-level peers.

Sample of data breakdown shown in CommonLit

Next, teachers will be able to see how their students performed compared to a national sample of student who took the same exam.

Sample of student data shown on CommonLit

Finally, educators receive a detailed breakdown of each student’s overall results and their performance by standard. This data report can also be easily downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet.

Sample of CommonLit's student data

In addition to these data reports that teachers will be able to view for the Pre, Mid and Post-Assessments, teachers will also be able to view comprehensive growth data after students complete the Post Assessment. For example, in the chart below, teachers can see how each student’s performance has changed throughout the school year.

Sample of overall student performance

With the purchase of CommonLit School Essentials PRO, teachers have access to all of the assessments and data reports discussed above. Administrators will also receive comprehensive school and district-wide data reports. These reports make it easy to track the progress of all students.

Next Steps

CommonLit is eager to support your team!

If you’re interested in learning more about rolling out CommonLit at your school please email partnerships@commonlit.org.

We are excited to talk to you!