It’s Time for Assessment to Fulfill Its Promise: To Teach, Not Just to Test
For too long, the world of educational assessment has been defined by a fundamental disconnect. We’ve treated tests as endpoints, final verdicts on what a student has or hasn’t learned. But what if we reimagined assessment as a beginning? What if assessment became an integral, dynamic part of the learning process itself, a catalyst for growth rather than just a measure of it?
This question is not new, but it has never been more urgent. It was the central charge of the pioneering Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education over a decade ago. Now, we are seeing that vision come to life with the publication of the Handbook for Assessment in the Service of Learning.
Today, we celebrate the release Volume I: Foundations for Assessment in the Service of Learning, the first of three free, open-access volumes designed to provide a blueprint for this essential transformation.
A Shift in Perspective: From Snapshot to Catalyst
The core objective of this handbook series is to answer a single, powerful question: How might educational assessment become a catalyst for learning and human development?
In the Series Preface, CRESST’s Eva Baker and colleagues argue that this requires a profound shift. We must move away from assessments that merely certify ‘what is’ and toward systems that illuminate how learning happens and how it can be continuously improved. This means weaving a focus on learning directly into the fabric of assessment design, drawing from the learning sciences, measurement theory, and improvement science.
Volume I lays the essential groundwork for this shift. It offers the principled design frameworks and conceptual models needed to integrate assessment with teaching and learning seamlessly. It grounds assessment in a realistic understanding of how people learn socially, culturally, and developmentally. It responsibly examines how emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and data analytics, can personalize and enrich assessments while rigorously upholding the critical standards of validity, fairness, and utility.
A Handbook for Everyone Who Believes in Learning
This work is not just for measurement specialists. This handbook was intentionally designed for a broad audience: from test developers and researchers to classroom educators, policymakers, and curriculum designers. It is a resource for anyone who believes, as we do, that the primary purpose of assessment should be to help learners learn.
The three volumes are organized to provide a complete picture:
- Volume I: Foundations for Assessment in the Service of Learning
- Volume II: Reconceptualizing Assessment to Improve Learning
- Volume III: Examples of Assessment in the Service of Learning
Together, they take us from high-level theory to concrete, practical examples, from classroom assessments that empower student agency to large-scale systems designed to support, not interrupt, the learning journey.
An Open Invitation to the Education Community
To ensure these ideas can spark change everywhere, the entire handbook series is being published as a free, open-access resource by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. We want to break down barriers and invite the global education community to engage with this work.
The message of this handbook is clear and one all of us at CRESST firmly believe in: it is time to embrace a future where assessment is a means to teach and learn. Assessment must become a partner in pedagogy, designed to nurture productive struggle and growth for every single learner.
We invite you to explore Volume I and join us in this critical effort to redesign assessment into the powerful tool for learning it was always meant to be.
Let’s get to work!