Communication of Assessment and Data
Assessment communication should increase agency. Students and families need understandable evidence, context, and a meaningful role in deciding the next step.
The official Element
Element 5C: Teachers engage with students, families, and guardians, along with other teachers and specialists, to share student strengths and areas of improvement gathered from assessments and reach common understanding about how to apply the information to support improvement goals and student progress.
What this Element asks of an educator
Assessment communication should increase agency. Students and families need understandable evidence, context, and a meaningful role in deciding the next step.
Read together, these indicators ask educators to make communication of assessment and data visible in planning, teaching, student experience, and follow-through. The aim is not to display every indicator in every lesson, but to understand the full range of the Element and select a focused practice to develop with evidence.
Official Example Indicators—and an SDLA reading
The Commission presents Example Indicators as illustrations rather than a comprehensive or required checklist. Their sequence shows the breadth of this Element and gives teachers, mentors, and coaches a shared language for focused development.
Involve students in developmentally appropriate self-assessment
Official indicator: Involve students in developmentally appropriate self-assessment, goal setting, and monitoring of progress, and provide students with options to revise work and demonstrate growth.
Engage students
Official indicator: Engage students, in developmentally appropriate ways, in discussing the assessments they take—what the assessments are, why they are important, formats and directions, how data are used, and, specifically, the ways that the assessment results affect them individually.
Facilitate conversations and reflections with students
Official indicator: Facilitate conversations and reflections with students, families, and guardians regarding students’ areas of strength and opportunities for growth.
Collaborate with specialists to accurately interpret assessment results that…
Official indicator: Collaborate with specialists to accurately interpret assessment results that apply to the broad range of students with disabilities, as well as to accelerated students, multilingual learners, and students who have targeted learning plans.
Articulate goals and working agreements with peers for collecting…
Official indicator: Articulate goals and working agreements with peers for collecting and exchanging student data that comply with laws and policies related to recording and sharing student information, data access and privacy, and individual and group reporting.
Developing the practice
Match evidence to purpose
Choose an assessment approach that can answer the question without claiming more certainty than it provides.
Interpret in context
Combine sources, examine student work, disaggregate appropriately, and look for missing information or task effects.
Use information with learners
Return understandable feedback, involve students and families, and connect evidence with a realistic next action.
Evidence worth noticing
- an assessment plan naming purpose, method, access, and intended decision
- student work examined alongside scores, observations, or dashboard patterns
- records of feedback, reteaching, regrouping, extension, or resource changes
- student and family participation in interpreting evidence and setting next steps
Evidence caution: No single artifact proves accomplished practice. Interpret evidence in context, center student experience and learning, use multiple sources, and avoid collecting identifiable information that is not necessary.
A pinch of data integration and digital learning
Digital systems can organize information, improve access, coordinate work, or shorten a feedback loop. They are valuable only when the educator can explain the human decision they support, the information they require, and how privacy, accessibility, equity, and professional responsibility are protected.
Blackboard ParentLink
Consider how a district platform can modernize repeatable communication while educators preserve the human conversation.
Questions for reflection and coaching
- Where is communication of assessment and data already visible in my practice, and what evidence supports that judgment?
- Which students experience the current approach differently from the way I intend?
- Which official indicator names the most important next area for growth?
- What is one affordable, manageable adjustment I can test, and what will I look for afterward?
- Whose perspective—student, family, colleague, specialist, or community partner—would improve the next decision?