Make Interim Assessments Work for You, Not Against You

Interim assessments are meant to guide instruction, not just fill up your calendar. But when they’re disconnected from daily instruction or are slow to deliver insights, they become just another thing to mark off your checklist.

Let’s talk about what makes interim assessments work and how Formative’s Balanced Assessment Suite can help you make every assessment count.

• The background: What are interim assessments?
• The challenge: Are your interim assessments working for you?
• Best practices for implementing and analyzing interim assessments

[The background: What are interim assessments?](id-what)

Interim assessments, also known as benchmark assessments, are periodic evaluations given throughout the academic year to track students’ learning progress. They have four defining characteristics that set them apart from other assessment types. These include:

• Timing: Interim assessments happen several times throughout the academic year. The most common cadence is to offer them 3-4 times per year, at the beginning, middle, and end of the academic calendar, to show students’ progress over time.
• Scope: Interim assessments cover a broader range of material than formative assessments, but they’re not as comprehensive as summative assessments. They measure students’ understanding of key content and skills taught during a specific period, such as a single grading period.
• Purpose: The main goal is to check student progress against end-of-year goals or standards. Interim assessments serve as academic checkpoints to identify strengths and weaknesses, guiding future instruction.
• Data usage: The data from interim assessments helps identify areas where students excel and where they need additional support. A data-driven approach enables teachers to tailor instructions and interventions to meet their students’ needs more effectively.

Interim assessment serves as an umbrella term for a variety of commonly used assessments across education. Some of them include:

• State and district assessment systems: Tests like the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), STAAR Assessment, or the Kansas Assessment Program (KAP) provide frequent checkpoints across subjects throughout the school year to monitor progress against state standards.
• Commercial assessment tools: Some districts may utilize commercial assessment tools in addition to or as an alternative to state assessment systems to measure progress across subjects and grade levels. Assessments like the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment suite, easyCBM, or curriculum providers such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Into Reading and Into Math series are part of this group.
• Local assessments: Schools and districts can also create their own common interim assessments, which may include options such as unit tests or oral exams. Typically, administrators, teachers, and other educators collaborate to create these assessments, which track specific student data that they want to analyze, data that other options may not provide.

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Read more: Create a Truly Balanced Assessment Framework [Guide]

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[The challenge: Are your interim assessments working for you?](id-how)

Does it ever feel like your interim assessments aren’t delivering the value they’re supposed to? This may be due to technical, instructional, cultural, or systematic challenges like:

• Too much testing and not enough learning: Frequent testing can lead to lost instructional time and a “teach to the test” mentality. Students and teachers can burn out when assessments feel constant and disconnected from the everyday learning process.
• Instruction misalignment: If interim assessments don’t closely align with lesson content, the results can be more confusing rather than clarifying. This fuels the “teach to the test” mentality because the outcomes and expectations are unclear.
• Lagging data: Interim assessment results may not be available until after students have progressed from one unit or topic to another. This doesn’t give teachers the time to review and analyze results before the next unit begins.
• Inapplicable data: Even reliable assessment data can be inapplicable if you don’t have the tools or resources to drive reteaching, student grouping, and enrichment opportunities.
• Data misuse: Interim assessment results may be used for high-stakes decisions for which they weren’t designed, causing unnecessary stress. They shouldn’t provide accountability or permanent placement data for students, teachers, or schools.
• Limited scope: While interim assessments measure a wider range of knowledge and skills than formative assessments, they may not capture the full picture of student skills, such as creativity or critical thinking.

These aren’t just assessment problems; they’re design and delivery problems. Following interim assessment best practices and using tools built to solve them, like Formative, can make it easier to address these challenges.

[Best practices for implementing and analyzing interim assessments](id-tips)

Effective interim assessments rely on more than just good test items. They demand strong instructional alignment and fast feedback loops to eliminate 

To address and avoid some of the common interim assessment challenges, you can follow these best practices:

Define a clear purpose

Clarify what data and insights you want to get from your interim assessments before you administer any exams. Don’t just test because the scheduled assessment window has come up. If you don’t know what you’re going to do with the results, you’re not ready to test yet.

Align assessments with your curriculum

Interim assessments should reflect pacing and instruction. End-of-unit exams, midterms, and other similar assessments are ideal for ensuring that you keep the content concise and focused. Curriculum alignment also helps you decide on your purpose and goals for data analysis.

Keep the experience low-stakes

Frame interim assessments as learning checks, not judgments of students' worth or intelligence. This approach can help reduce student stress around exams. Try breaking the tests up by phases or segments, or spread them across multiple days to avoid testing overwhelm.

Use data effectively

Don’t wait weeks to dig into your interim assessment data once it’s available. Review the results collaboratively with your professional learning communities (PLCs) to create timely action plans. The results can help you set student groups, reteach lessons, and support tiered interventions.

Provide teacher support

Offer ongoing training and support for your teachers and faculty members on data interpretation and differentiated instruction. If you don’t already have instructional coaches on your staff, adding one could be beneficial.

Maximize interim assessment potential with the Balanced Assessment Suite

Our Balanced Assessment Suite supports the full interim assessment cycle, helping you accelerate student learning with a single, collaborative assessment platform that connects classroom and district insights to drive smarter instruction and stronger alignment.

This suite includes a Formative school and district license, along with a range of add-ons and services designed to deepen impact. With the Balanced Assessment Suite, you can:

• Create purposeful, aligned assessments: Create and deliver reliable, standards-aligned formative and interim assessments to ensure consistent student progress.
• Gain actionable insights: See all your assessment data, including interim assessment results, in one spot so you can make confident, timely decisions that keep learners on track.
• See the instructional impact: Provide teachers with robust instructional tools, shared resources, and real-time insights to deliver engaging instruction that meets the needs of every student.
• Provide AI that works for teachers: Strengthen instruction and assessment with purposeful AI tools that generate standards-aligned activities, streamline students' feedback, and support all learners.

Want to learn more? Check out everything the Balanced Assessment Suite has to offer!