Common Based Assessment

In order for the 7th grade to be assess on what they have learned since the start of the school year, an entire district gives a common based assessment where 1 standard is addressed in each problem. The logic is that teachers do not want to double ding students point-wise when addressing whether they have properly displayed a Washington state standard. I asked why not create a problem where multiple standards are assessed and it was made clear that teachers wanted to make sure that students are getting all their points assigned to them if they display a particular standard. If the standard that the school was assessing was whether or not students know how to solve a one-step equation, it would not be fair to ding a student for computational error, therefore a students is able to achieve full credit for a problem even if the answer was wrong, just as long as it was evident that a student was showing that they understood HOW to solve the problems. The common-based assessment is used to inform teachers and the district where the student's knowledge is currently at and at this point it is only used as informative testing but teachers have the option of using these results to structure the student's placement in classes.