Assessing Your Assessments
How assessment audits help districts cut redundant tests and give teachers back instructional time, given how many tests students now take.
An assessment audit for schools counts every test and cuts the ones that do not inform a decision. See what the data and state action show.
In 2017, Kenneth Tam described how a school district can run an assessment audit to cut duplicate tests, in eight steps. The article and a later edCircuit note on the testing backlash appear below as published. After them, a new section looks at what the testing research and state action since then add for any district planning an assessment audit.
Taking steps to reduce redundant and unnecessary student assessments by Kenneth Tam
Editor’s note (2026): Education Week reports 25.3 hours of standardized testing for eighth grade only.
Three factors have contributed to over-testing: 1) the belief that educators need to administer multiple assessments in order to “triangulate” a pattern in students’ level of achievement; 2) when educators use a new theory of practice, they add new assessments addressing those practices while still being reliant on existing assessments; 3) testing is oftentimes decided at a building level leading to multiple tests being used across a district.
Triangulation
Administering multiple assessments to “triangulate results” may sound good in theory, while in reality not all tests given assess the same thing and at the same depth. The unintended consequence of this approach is teachers and administrators having too much, uncorrelated data. What are they supposed to do with it all? How can they easily and efficiently use the data to inform their instruction? It’s a hard and time-consuming challenge.
Addition without subtraction
District vs. local control
The CGCS found that its districts were using 401 different assessments. When each school in a district is administering different tests, it is difficult to see district patterns. In addition, when students and teachers move from school to school, they have to take/learn different tests or reports, respectively.
There have been state and local efforts to reduce testing time and the number of assessments given, so that more time can be dedicated to teaching and student instruction. A consistent and streamlined approach to student assessments allows districts to focus on the right data so that teachers can deliver quality, individualized instruction students need to succeed.
So, what can your school system do to reduce assessments and minimize testing? It starts with conducting an assessment audit.
Auditing your Assessments
Conducting an assessment audit is a multi-phase and multi-week process involving the following steps:
Step 1: Form a committee – Create an assessment committee of dedicated individuals – including district administrators and school leaders – who have the ability to decide or influence which assessments are used and understand the need for the audit and are committed to a new, fresh assessment approach.
Step 2: Set an assessment vision and agree upon the scope of the work – Articulate the district’s vision of an ideal assessment system, addressing questions such as: Who are the users? What are their specific needs? What types of assessments are required to provide the information needed to inform key decisions? What is the scope of the work? Are we making minor changes or a more significant overhaul of the assessments we administer within the district?
Step 3: Determine the criteria of a test worth taking – Look at criteria such as the characteristics of high-quality tests and identify which assessment criteria is important to the district. This could include making sure that assessments measure achievement and growth, inform instruction, align to standards, are timely, predict performance on state tests, and inform parents and students.
Step 4: Conduct an inventory – Now it’s time to identify which assessments are being administered to students across the different grade levels and subjects. The committee should focus on the ones where the majority of the students within a grade are completing the assessment; determine the type and purpose of the assessment; and indicate the frequency, time required for completion and when in the school year the assessment is administered.
Step 5: Analyze findings and make recommendations– First, group assessments by type and identify potential overlaps. Then, check to ensure assessments are not mismatched to their intended purpose. If you compare each assessment against the district’s criteria of a test worth taking, it will allow you to recommend a smaller subset of assessments to maintain.
Step 6: Develop a change management strategy – The committee needs to devise a plan for sharing final recommendations with stakeholders. They will need to consider who will be impacted by the change and if there is a need for additional professional development.
Step 7: Plan the rollout of new assessment system – Create a new assessment calendar that ensures assessments are not concentrated during certain months. Also during this step, identify the questions you want to answer with the assessment data; create a report selector tool that shows which report to use to answer which question; and determine which measures are important and what are the appropriate thresholds to consider. This will help identify students who are below thresholds, and define what actions to take.
Step 8: Execute rollout plan and communicate broadly the decisions made – Put the plan you created in Step 7 into action, and present the findings of the assessment audit, and communicate decisions to the community.
Assessment audit for schools in 2026: what the research and state action add
An assessment audit for schools is a structured count of every test students take, followed by a decision about which ones to keep. As Kenneth Tam explains above, the process starts with a committee, a vision and a set of criteria for what makes a test worth taking, and ends with a rollout plan and a calendar. Since 2017, more has become known about how heavy testing loads look in practice, what federal law allows states to do about them, and how at least one state is acting now. This section sets out those findings and what they mean for a district leader.
What the Council of the Great City Schools found
The numbers Tam cites come from a 2015 study by the Council of the Great City Schools of 66 of its 68 member districts. Education Week reported that students in those districts took 401 unique tests in the year before the study. Eighth graders spent an average of 25.3 hours, or more than four school days, on mandatory tests in 2014-15, the most of any tested grade. That figure leaves out optional tests and the progress checks teachers give themselves. The load also varied greatly between districts: students in St. Paul, Minnesota, a low-testing district, spent an average of 10.8 hours, while students in Detroit spent 30.5.
Two other findings bear directly on the audit steps Tam describes. The study found that many tests were redundant and were used for purposes they were not designed for, such as evaluating school staff, and that 39 percent of districts waited two to four months for state test results, which limited their use in teaching. It also found no correlation between the time spent testing and gains in math and reading scores. A district that finishes an audit can use these findings as a check: for each test left on the calendar, someone should be able to say which decision it informs and when the results will arrive.
What federal law allows, and what it does not
The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 gave states a route to this work. As of January 2018, when Education Week explained the terms, the program worked as follows. This section does not check how it has changed since. States could use money from the State Assessment Grant program, about $369 million, to review required tests for redundant or low-quality assessments. A state that applied could receive up to $1.5 million for an audit and had to share at least 20 percent with its districts. Districts and schools could not apply on their own and had to wait to see whether their state wanted in. Congress did not approve the Obama administration’s request to make audit grants competitive, and the next administration’s budget request did not appear to reserve funds for audits. States did not need the grant to audit, since they could already do so under the law.
The practical lesson for a district is that the audit is something it can begin itself, and Tam’s steps do not require outside money. A state program can make the work easier and more consistent across districts, but a district should not wait for one.
A state example from 2024
Connecticut’s Public Act 24-93, effective July 1, 2024, directs the state education department to conduct a comprehensive audit of the assessments given to students. The audit includes guidance to local boards for taking an inventory of assessments at the classroom, school and district levels, professional learning for teachers on assessment literacy, and an evaluation of the assessments inventoried. The stated goals are to eliminate redundant assessments, discourage classroom activities that focus only on test preparation, reduce testing time, and favor assessments that give teachers usable information. The department’s report to the General Assembly, submitted on February 10, 2026, found that students in grades 3 through 8 spend about three and a half to four hours on the Smarter Balanced state tests in English and math and, on average, another 20 to 21 hours on district-required assessments that teachers have not modified. About a quarter of districts average more than 26 hours on local assessments. Total testing time was roughly two to three percent of the 900 hours of school work that state law requires. The report also found that many broad tests are used to guide daily instruction although they are not designed for that purpose, and it recommended ending the fall and spring administrations of broad local assessments, among other steps.
The act’s three parts match Tam’s: an inventory, an evaluation against criteria, and attention to the people who use the results. The act calls for inventories at the classroom level, although the department’s data collection was limited to district-required assessments that teachers had not modified, so teacher-written tests were not counted.
How often should a school assess?
Some readers arrive at this article asking how often to assess students during the school year. None of the sources opened for this section gives a number, and the Council’s finding of no link between testing time and score gains suggests that frequency alone is the wrong measure. The better question is whether each test answers something a teacher or leader needs to decide, and whether the answer comes back soon enough to be used. A district can take its inventory before the school year’s calendar is fixed, and again at midyear while results can still change spring plans.
The edCircuit assessment guide covers the range of assessment types and what each is for.
Further Reading
- EdWeek – How to Assess Arts Education—And Why You Should
- EdSurge – How to Overcome Apathy and Disillusionment When Standardized Tests Fail Kids
- San Francisco Examiner – SFUSD may cut down on tests for students
The testing backlash in late 2017
A day after this article was published in November 2017, edCircuit writer Jim Reams reported on the growing dissatisfaction with standardized testing. Jim Reams noted that some states were looking at alternatives: Georgia lawmakers were considering alternatives to standardized tests, and a county in Florida had set out to scale back its testing in a plan described as less testing, more teaching.
Jim Reams also connected heavy testing to “teaching to the test.” According to that report, educators may have to set aside the art of teaching, sometimes for a month or more, to prepare students for assessments. As lawmakers raised the stakes on results, in some cases tying teacher pay to student performance, Jim Reams saw an increase in teaching to the test and in outright fraud, citing the case of the Atlanta teachers who were convicted of cheating on standardized tests.
The challenge Jim Reams described is the one the assessment audit above is meant to address: striking a balance between helping students become well-rounded critical thinkers and keeping an accountability system that measures results.
Related reading
More on Assessment and Testing
