Interim Assessment FAQ
What is a ClearSight Interim assessment?
Interim assessments are used to track students’ progress toward mastery of grade-level standards, before and after significant amounts of instruction (typically twice a year, though can be administered up to four times per year).
ClearSight's Interim tests are adaptive, meaning that each student will be responding to a different selection of items depending upon their responses. As a result, the composition of an Interim test will vary from student to student.
All of ClearSight's Interim assessment items are also former state summative items. This means that all of our interim items have undergone the same rigorous item development and approval process that produces the items seen on state summative tests.
How are Interim scores reported?
ClearSight's Interim assessments are reported in proficiency levels and scale scores, comparable to those given on state summative assessments. For more information on Interim assessment scoring, refer to our Interim Assessment Scores resource.
Will ClearSight Interim assessments predict how well my students will perform on the summative state test?
The ClearSight Interim assessments provide an indicator of how your student is tracking toward mastering the grade-level standards.
The four proficiency levels represent this: 1) Highly Proficient, 2) Proficient, 3) Approaching Proficient, 4) Below Proficient.
Since your summative state test also measures mastery of grade-level standards, the ClearSight Interim assessment is one strong indicator of how ready your student is to succeed on the summative state test.
Do you have to take both segments of the ELA Interim?
For Interim ELA Assessments, both Segment 1 (comprised of reading questions) and Segment 2 (comprised of a writing prompt) must be completed. Students should submits their test at the end of Segment 2 when their writing response has been completed. When Segment 2 is submitted, test administrators and teachers to whom the student is rostered will see the student’s score in Reporting.
If your district uses Interim Reading Assessments, there is no writing portion included, and therefore the Reading Interims contain only one test segment. Writing can be assessed separately using a Formative Writing test that is separate from other ELA topics and scored independently.
In the Interim ELA test, my student is seeing a notification that she/he is done with segment one, what should she/he do?
If your district uses Interim ELA tests, there are 2 segments to the test. Segment 1 includes reading, language, and editing passages and questions. Segment 2 contains a writing prompt where the student reads a passage and then responds to a question in essay format.
There is a clear delineation between the 2 segments for the students. The students will see a screen that looks similar to the below screenshot:
- The number of items shown in the middle of the graphic may vary by student and/or by grade as these are adaptive tests.
- If you do not want students to take the writing portion right away, teachers should tell students NOT to click the NEXT SEGMENT button.
- Teachers can instruct the students to pause their test at this point and they can log back in later to complete the test. They should use the pause button in the upper right of their screen.
- If teachers are using a monitored session, teachers will need to open a new session with the test in it so students can log back in.
- If teachers are using a non-monitored assignments, students can use the same URL link or session id as before and no approval will be required when the student signs back in later.