Overview

The Assessment Administration Department offers leadership and support to all schools in implementing national, state, and district-level assessments. Assessments are essential for ensuring that educational goals are being met and for continuously improving the quality of education. Assessments play a crucial role in schools for several reasons:

  1. Measuring Student Learning: They help determine how well students are understanding and retaining the material taught.
  2. Guiding Instruction: Teachers use assessment results to adjust their teaching strategies to better meet the needs of their students.
  3. Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses: Assessments highlight areas where students excel and where they may need additional support.
  4. Informing Policy and Planning: The school district and policymakers use assessment data to make informed decisions about curriculum and resource allocation.
  5. Accountability: They provide a way to hold schools and educators accountable for student learning outcomes.

The Assessment Administration Department provides training and guidance to all schools in DeKalb County School District to ensure that schools maintain the integrity of the assessment program and its results, in alignment with the Georgia Student Assessment Program. The purpose of the program is to measure student achievement of the state-adopted academic content standards and to use assessment results to improve teaching and learning. Results from the assessment program are used to identify the extent to which students have mastered the state’s academic content standards, to provide teachers with feedback about instructional practice, and to assist school districts in identifying strengths and weaknesses to establish priorities in planning educational programs.

Vision
The vision of the Assessment Administration Department is to ensure the integrity and accuracy of assessment results to support meaningful educational planning and accountability.

Mission
To create a comprehensive and effective assessment program that supports the educational goals of the district by

  1. Maintaining the accuracy and fairness of the assessment process.
  2. Providing training and guidance to schools for effective implementation of assessments.
  3. Ensuring assessment data is valid to improve teaching and learning outcomes and inform instructional practices and policy decisions.

Assessment Types

The Georgia Student Assessment Program includes formative and summative criterion-referenced assessments for students in kindergarten through high school. ​​Several Georgia assessments are developed and customized by the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE), in partnership with a test development vendor and Georgia educators. These custom assessments are aligned to Georgia’s state content standards and expectations for student performance. While each of these assessments is unique in some ways, they all follow a similar development process.

Formative Assessments

  • Georgia Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills (GKIDS 2.0)

District Interim Assessments for Progress Monitoring

  • District Benchmarks
  • NWEA MAP Growth Assessments

Summative assessments

  • Georgia Milestone End-of-Grade (EOG) and End-of-Course (EOC)
  • Georgia Alternate Assessments (GAA)
  • WIDA ACCESS/Alternate ACCESS for ELLs.
  • National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)

Georgia also participates in the National Assessment of Education Progress in grades 4, 8, and 12. The Dekalb County School District (DCSD) offers the Benchmark assessments MAP Growth assessments to measure student progress toward mastering specific grade-based standards over time. MAP scores are also used to determine gifted eligibility in the DCSD.

Both state and federal law requires public schools to annually assess all enrolled students. In Georgia, the Georgia Milestones Assessments fulfill this mandate for students enrolled in grades 3-8 and high school. As a public school district, we are required to provide all students the assessments mandated by the state of Georgia. (O.C.G.A. 20-2-281).

Test Matrix

The assessment and accountability testing matrix indicates which tests are taken at which grade level(s) and whether the test is:

Required by the state of Georgia (S)
Required by the DeKalb County School District (D)
Expected, but not required by the DeKalb County School District (X)
Optional (O).