The content of assessments should match challenging subject matter standards and be connected to contexts of application.  Learning should be assessed based on observations, oral questioning, significant tasks, projects, demonstrations, collections of student work, and students’ self-evaluations.  Teachers and administrators must engage in a systematic analysis of the available evidence.  Teachers’ close assessment of students’ understandings, feedback from peers, and student self-assessments are a central part of the social processes that mediate the development of intellectual abilities, construction of knowledge, and formation of students’ identities (Shepard, 2000).

In addition to assessments being well aligned with curriculum and pedagogy, assessments should include high-leverage tasks to generate important information about students’ understanding of the most important concepts or ideas in a unit.  Coherence between assessment tasks and core concepts in the units of study is vital.  Assessment content and formats should more directly embody thinking and reasoning abilities that are the ultimate goals of learning (Frederiksen & Collins, 1989; Resnick & Resnick, 1992).