Assessment FAQ

Our state tests serve multiple objectives:

  • They provide feedback about students' academic progress and how it aligns with grade-level expectations, providing parents and teachers a big-picture perspective about how a student is progressing compared to peers across the district and state, including a student's strengths and growth opportunities.
  • This builds confidence and transparency about students' readiness for college and the workforce among Tennessee universities and employers and holds us accountable to serving all students fairly.
  • Assessments help educators strengthen instruction and reflect on their practice, and allow us to highlight schools where students are excelling, so we can learn from those who are doing well.
  • State assessments also help inform decisions at the state level and help state and district leaders determine how to allocate resources, better invest in schools, and identify where we may need to offer additional support.

Tennessee teachers are an integral part of the entire assessment process—from item writing through standards setting. Teachers are involved in the item writing, item review, bias and sensitivity review, accessibility review, and range finding processes. Also, both educators and community members participate in the standards setting process.

  • Item writing: Tennessee educators are trained to write items that will eventually be on field tests and operational tests.
  • Item review:  Tennessee educators review items for alignment to academic standards and grade level appropriateness. During these reviews Tennessee educators can accept, reject, or make suggestions for revisions to an item.
  • Bias and sensitivity review:  Tennessee educators review items for bias and sensitivity issues. These educators ensure items are bias free and represent the values of Tennesseans. During these reviews Tennessee educators can accept, reject, or make suggestions for revisions to an item.
  • Accessibility review:  Tennessee educators review item format to ensure the accessibility of the item for all students. This group closely reviews for accessibility for students with disabilities.
  • Range finding:  Tennessee educators score a sampling of Tennessee student essays in English language arts and social studies in order to set the anchor papers that determine the cut off for each trait at each level. The anchor papers selected by Tennessee educators are in turn used to train graders and continue recalibrating graders throughout the scoring process.
  • Standard setting:  Tennessee stakeholders including parents, educators, and community members review actual test items and recommend the cut scores for each performance level descriptor (below, approaching, on-track, and mastery) for the assessments.

Grade 2 (optional)

  • Districts choose whether to administer the optional, second-grade assessment.

Grades 3–8:

  • Students in grades 3–8 will take assessments in math, English language arts (ELA), social studies, and science.
  • Students in grades 3–8 with the most significant cognitive disabilities (about one percent of the student population) will take the MSAA for ELA and math and the TCAP Alternative assessment for social studies and science.
  • English Learners also take the WIDA ACCESS for ELs assessment to exit the EL program offered to students who need assistance in learning the English language. 

High school:

  • High school students will take state assessments for courses with End of Course exams (EOCs):
    • English I/II
    • Algebra I/Geometry/Algebra II or Integrated Math I/II/III
    • U.S. History/Geography
    • Biology
  • Students in grade 10 with the most significant cognitive disabilities (about one percent of the student population) will take the TCAP Alternative assessment for science. Similarly, students in grade 11 with the most significant cognitive disabilities (about one percent of the student population) will take the MSAA for ELA and math.
  • All assessments will be administered toward the end of the year (or at the end of the semester for high school students on block schedule). Districts determine specific testing dates during the testing window.
  • State assessments will be administered during a four-week window in the spring. The English Language Arts Subpart 1 for computer-based tests must be completed during week 1 of the administration window while paper-based tests must complete all English language arts the first week of the window
  • For high school fall block, there will also be an assessment window in the fall.
  • The assessments for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, MSAA (math and ELA) and TCAP Alternative (science and social studies), will take place over a two month window in the spring.
  • You can view a detailed assessment calendar here.
  • District may set or allow schools to set the testing schedule within the state administration dates in order to meet their needs.  
  • The exception is the English language arts portion of the test as outlined above. This is because student writing is scored individually by hand.

 

Raw scores: Raw data provides a limited view of student performance; districts use convert data to numerical grades, based on scales set by local board policy.

  • High schools on block schedule: January (fall block) and on or before May 20 (spring block)
  • Grades 2–12 on traditional schedule: Eon or before May 20 each year.

Detailed score reports: The score reports (example here), which paint a detailed view of student performance, will be sent to districts for distribution to students/families. Each district has its own method for distributing score reports. Student reports offer detailed information on student performance, including strengths, areas for growth, and suggested next steps.

  • High school End-of-Course assessments: Late summer
  • Grades 2-8: Late summer
  • TCAP-ALT and MSAA: Late Summer
  • All students receive detailed individual score reports. 
  • Additionally, teachers can reflect on their students' overall performance using the detailed class roster reports and standards analysis reports. Class roster reports provide an overview of how individual students performed on the assessment, and students are grouped according to their performance level. Standards analysis reports provide an overview of all student performance on individual standards. In other words, teachers can determine areas of their instruction where students performed well, as well as areas where there is room for more growth.

For more information about teacher evaluation, please reference the Educator Evaluation webpage at https://www.tn.gov/content/tn/education/teaching-in-tennessee/teacher-evaluation.html. For questions about Teacher Student Connection, please contact Claiming.Questions@tn.gov.

  • Decisions regarding test accessibility supports must be made on an individual student basis and must be required for the student to access the content.
  • Additional details regarding test accessibility is available in  the Accessibility and Accommodations Manual.
  • ELs are required to participate in any state or federal mandated assessments, including achievement assessments.
  • Testing accommodations apply for ELs who are in direct service, waived services, or considered transition during the four years following exit from the ESL program.
  • This assessment determines proficiency levels for ELs and allows districts to properly place ELs into the English as a Second Language program for the district.
    • Federal policy requires under Title I that all English Learners be assessed for English language proficiency.
  • Our English language proficiency assessment is the WIDA ACCESS 2.0 assessment, which is a computer-based assessment for ELs in all grades except kindergarten.
  • Kindergarten ELs also take an assessment called WIDA ACCESS, which is personally tailored for each student by the test administrator.
  • All WIDA assessments cover all four domains: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. 
  • This assessment is given to ELs in the spring.

Students in grades 3–8 take the ELA test in four subparts. The first subpart asks students to respond to a text-dependent writing prompt. The other subparts include multiple item types. All subparts are administered near the end of the school year.

Students in high school take the EOC for English I/II in three subparts. The first subpart asks students to respond to a text-dependent writing prompt. The other subparts include multiple item types. All subparts are administered near the end of the course.

Students respond to one writing prompt per reading passage set. In most grades, this means that they will respond to one writing prompt total. In grade 3, however, students will respond to two total writing prompts (one response for each passage set); students will be asked to write one paragraph per response. In the future grades, students will have only one written response, but the length of the response requested will be longer.

The prompt could be in any of the three modes of writing (informational, opinion/argument, or narrative).

  • Yes. Students will be asked to answer several passage-based questions before the writing prompt.
  • We believe that multiple-choice questions before the writing prompt will encourage students to closely read the text.
  • The scoring process starts with range finding.
  • During range finding Tennessee educators use the Tennessee writing rubrics to set the cuts at every score level on each trait. The papers used to set the cut scores for each trait are known as anchor papers and are used to train content experts in the scoring process.
  • Student responses will then be scored by these scorers using the anchor papers and the Tennessee writing rubrics that have been used previously.

No, there will not be a stand-alone ELA field test in the 2019-20 school year.

  • Students in grades 3–8 and grade 11 will take the Multi-State Alternate Assessment (MSAA) for ELA.
  • MSAA will be administered during a two-month window in the spring.
  • The test is highly individualized to meet the needs of each student.

All math tests are administered in three subparts during a single testing window.

Testing time is slightly different based on subject and grade level. Please review the testing time chart here.

A time limit is necessary to fully assess procedural and computational fluency, number sense, and conceptual understanding. Students must work within a time limit to demonstrate how they can rely on these skills to efficiently work with mathematics without a calculator. You can learn more about the calculator prohibited subpart here.

  • Students in grades 3–8 and grade 11 will take the Multi-State Alternate Assessment (MSAA) for math.
  • MSAA will be administered during a two-month window in the spring.
  • The test is highly individualized to meet the needs of each student.
  • Generally, science standards, test structure, and item types are the same as in recent years.
  • In grades 3 and 4, the test has been cut in half in order to allow for a more robust ELA test. Despite the shorter test, the expectations for learning have not changed. In order to prepare students for content in grades 5–8 and high school, it is important to continue engaging students in rich science instruction.
  • High school students in biology and chemistry take the test in one subpart.
  • The revised science standards and aligned assessment will be implemented in the 2018-19 school year.

Testing time is slightly different based on subject and grade level. Please review the testing time chart here.

  • Students in grades 3–8 and grade 10 take the TCAP Alternative (TCAP-Alt) assessment for science.
  • TCAP-Alt is administered during a two-month window in the spring.
  • The test is highly individualized to meet the needs of each student.
  • There is an operational social studies test for students in grades 6–8 this year.
  • The 6-8 social studies tests are administered in two subparts that include multiple choice and multiple select items.
  • The U.S. history test is administered in two subparts that include multiple choice and multiple select items.

Testing time is slightly different based on subject and grade level. Please review the testing time chart here. 

  • Students in grades 3–8 take the TCAP Alternative (TCAP-Alt) assessment for social studies.
  • TCAP-Alt is administered during a two-month window in the spring.
  • The test is highly individualized to meet the needs of each student.