Assessment Design for Deeper Learning

A Practical Professional Learning Series That Improves the Quality of Your Assessments — and the Decisions You Make From Them

Assessment is one of the most powerful levers in a school — but in most classrooms, it is also one of the least precise.

Too often, assessments:

  • overemphasize recall instead of reasoning

  • misalign with standards and learning goals

  • produce data that is difficult to interpret or act on

The result is a gap between what teachers intend to measure and what assessments actually capture.

Assessment Design for Deeper Learning is a structured, hands-on workshop series that builds educators’ assessment literacy and equips them to design high-quality summative assessments that accurately measure student understanding.

Participants do not just learn about assessment — they build, revise, and leave with assessments they can immediately use.

What Educators Learn To Do

  • Design Assessments That Truly Align to Learning Goals
    Translate standards and objectives into clear, measurable assessment targets using practical blueprinting tools.

  • Write Questions That Measure Thinking, Not Recall
    Develop questions in a variety of styles that assess reasoning, analysis, and conceptual understanding.

  • Increase Clarity and Consistency in Grading
    Create transparent criteria and rubrics that improve fairness, reduce ambiguity, and communicate expectations to students.

  • Use Assessment Data More Effectively
    Apply basic item analysis and evaluation techniques to refine assessments and better understand student performance.

What The Experience Looks Like

This is not a sit-and-get workshop.

Educators work directly with their own content and assessments throughout the series, applying each concept in real time. Each session builds toward a finalized, aligned summative assessment.

Coaching and guided practice are embedded throughout to ensure that learning translates into actual classroom change.

What Participants Leave With

  • 1–3 revised or newly developed summative assessments

  • A standards-aligned assessment blueprint

  • High-quality assessment questions

  • Clear, student-facing assessment criteria or rubrics

  • Practical tools for analyzing and improving future assessments

Why Schools Invest in This Work

  • Stronger Instructional Alignment
    Assessments reflect what is actually taught and valued.

  • More Meaningful Student Data
    Teachers gain clearer insight into what students understand — and what they don’t.

  • Improved Grading Clarity and Consistency
    Students and families better understand how performance is evaluated.

  • Increased Teacher Confidence
    Educators make more intentional, informed decisions about assessment design.

Better assessments lead to better instruction, clearer data, and stronger student outcomes.

This workshop gives educators the tools to design assessments that actually measure learning — and use that information to improve it.