• The fundamental purpose of assessment is to improve teaching and learning.
• Ongoing assessment informs teachers about students’ growth and the effectiveness of their instructional practices. It allows teachers to select materials and design instruction to meet students’ unique needs.
• Teachers should not have to set aside good instruction in order to prepare students to take a test. Instead, good instruction itself should be the best preparation.
• Students need to be actively involved in the assessment process.
• There are four main roles for assessment in Reading: Screening, diagnostic, progress monitoring and accountability assessment.
• In preparing students for high stakes testing the most important thing to do is teach effectively. If the test is testing a higher level of complexity than what is being taught, the teaching is not going to prepare a student for the test.
• Students need to be familiar with the differences between norm-referenced tests and criterion-referenced tests, as well as the expectations for extended responses, multiple choice and true and false types of questions.

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