Key Ideas

Key Ideas

• Planning and preparation are critical to successful assessment implementation. • Regular and early communication with school administrators and school leadership is critical to ensuring the success of a large-scale assessment exercise. School administrators must understand who will be assessed, why the assessment is taking place in their school, what will be assessed, and how long the assessment will take so that they can plan accordingly. • Tracking school and student participation and nonparticipation is important for the management of assessment administration and analysis of resulting data. • Checklists and standard forms can help track the assembly, use, dissemination, and return of test materials. • Resource costs and time required for organizing, securely packaging, and transporting test materials must be accounted for and are often underestimated in budget plans. • Checklists and forms can help ensure that test administrators are prepared for conducting the assessment according to the procedures described in the test administration manual. • Monitoring and reporting local conditions at the time of the assessment is important for accountability and continuous improvement of assessment activities.