An effective science assessment measures student understanding and knowledge of concepts. The standard-based questions work together to create a big picture of student understanding.

1. Identify the big idea of the science domain to assess to select standards.
2. Analyze the skills and important concepts within the standards to see how they work together to create a learning story.
3. The inclusion of several broad standards requires review of test items from a coverage perspective. The complementary nature of science standards can be a blessing and curse. It is common to see overlap and cueing across questions on a science test.
4. Standards with many skills need more items or a task to allow students to show learning across the skills within a standard.
5. Science tests easily overburden a concept or skill, especially interesting or popular concepts.

Question the test

• Are the questions assessing the standards in more than one way?
• Is each standard or domain tested for the breadth required by the language of the standards?
• Is there a good mix of difficulty and complexity for the overall test and each concept?
• Do the knowledge items work together to create a complete picture of student learning?
• Is overlap of minimized with no cueing of answers from other items?