Phase 1 – Reviewing Existing Assessments

Phase 1 of the work of the Content Collaboratives brought together Colorado educators, and content and assessment experts to review existing assessments in all academic content areas. Each content area engaged a discipline specific researcher to identify and evaluate assessments with promise that appeared to be aligned or partially aligned to the Colorado Academic Standards in the preschool through twelfth grade.
The Content Collaboratives and a Technical Steering Committee reviewed the assessments by utilizing an Assessment Review Tool which is designed to help Colorado educators rate an assessment’s potential for measuring student learning. This tool helps measure the extent to which an assessment does the following:

• Aligns to the Colorado Academic Standards
• Includes rigorous scoring criteria
• Is fair and unbiased
• Provides opportunities for learning

Access to the Assessment Review Tool along with helpful glossaries, depth of knowledge guidance, inventories of assessments reviewed and reports outlining assessment gaps that still exist can be found in the CDE Resource Bank at http://www.coloradoplc.org/assessment.

A variety of assessment types have been recommended or partially recommended by the Content Collaboratives members in Career and Technical Education, Comprehensive Health, Dance, Drama & Theatre Arts, Mathematics, Music, Physical Education, Reading, Writing & Communicating, Science, Social Studies, Visual Arts, and World Languages. The reviewed assessments can be found in the CDE Resource Bank.