July 24, 2026
Assessment Excellence: Learning, Reporting, and Progress
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Key Topics Covered
The Missing Angle
Most readers will probably remember the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Snow White. The magic mirror in the story has one unique quality: it always tells the truth. As we shall see later, educational assessment also aims to do the same. But first, let us take a look at history.
The Colosseum became familiar to audiences worldwide through the film Gladiator. Despite their brutal nature, gladiatorial contests became one of Rome's most popular forms of public entertainment (Sky HISTORY, n.d.), with the first recorded contests dating to 264 BCE and continuing for centuries (Cartwright, 2018). The Olympic Games, held at Olympia from 776 BCE and humanistic in spirit, centred on celebration, athletic excellence, and friendly rivalry among city-states, began roughly five hundred years before the gladiatorial contests: proof that progress isn't guaranteed, and that it should be watched over (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2026).
Around the same time, across Central Asia, nomadic cultures also developed traditions involving equestrian competition, wrestling, archery, and intellectual games. Today, these traditions are celebrated through the modern World Nomad Games, an international competition centred on the traditional sports and cultural heritage of historically nomadic peoples (UNESCO, 2024).
Isyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan - September 29, 2018: Athletes of Scottish Highland Games playing Caber toss during World Nomad Games
The first modern World Nomad Games were held in Kyrgyzstan in 2014. Traditional archery is one of the sports represented in the Games, alongside equestrian events, wrestling, and mind games (Directorate for the Preparation and Holding of the 5th World Nomad Games, 2024; UNESCO, 2024).
To me, archery naturally contains several elements that lend themselves well to an analogy with educational assessment. Let me explain: last year, while I was in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, delivering an assessment training program, I noticed advertisements for the World Nomad Games. By coincidence, my colleague and I had also been using an arrow-and-target analogy during our training to explain key assessment concepts. That prompted me to draw a connection between nomadic culture and educational assessment.
Let me walk you through it: in assessment, questions can be viewed as arrows aimed at the centre of a target, with the centre representing students’ learning. The archer's success depends on consistently hitting the centre of the target, just as the assessor's success depends on consistently measuring students' true learning. Educational assessments should be designed around a clear understanding of what learners are expected to know, the observations that can provide evidence of that knowledge, and the methods used to interpret the resulting evidence (National Research Council, 2001).
In both archery and educational assessment, there is one important question for professionals: Are we able to hit the centre of the target, and do we do so consistently every time? However, hitting the target is only one part of the story. The missing angle begins after the arrow lands: What do we do with the result once we have measured it?
Mirroring the Silence
Back to the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale Snow White. It all starts when the magic mirror tells the Queen the truth. Now, let us think of assessment as a mirror. On a more everyday note, before leaving home, we look in the mirror to check our appearance. We may notice that our shirt needs ironing or that our hair needs tidying.
Much like the magical qualities of the mirror in the fairy tale, a high-quality assessment instrument is characterised by two important qualities: validity and reliability. Validity is the extent to which an assessment reflects what a learner knows and can do - an evaluative judgment of how well the evidence and theory behind a test support the intended interpretation of its scores (Messick, 1989). This is similar to seeing our true reflection in a mirror. Reliability, on the other hand, is the ability to produce consistent results across repeated administrations of the same testing procedure (AERA, APA, & NCME, 2014). Likewise, if the mirror shows the same reflection in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, it illustrates the concept of reliability.
Now, we have established that, for an assessment to be of high quality, it should measure a learner's true ability consistently. In the same way, a good mirror should provide a true and consistent reflection every time we look into it. Once we have a common understanding of what constitutes a high-quality assessment, the next important question is: What do we do with the results once we know they are both valid and reliable?
What we do after we know the results is about feedback. Research on feedback shows that information is most useful when it helps learners understand where they are going, how they are progressing, and what they should do next (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). According to the principles of assessment validity, particularly consequential validity, the assessment design, especially the assessment framework, needs to be developed in a way that provides a clear indication of what should happen after the assessment, that is, validity itself carries an obligation to consider the value implications of how scores will be interpreted and used in advance (Messick, 1989).
Building on Messick's unified theory of validity, Mislevy proposed a Validity by Design approach, arguing that considerations about the interpretation and use of assessment evidence should be embedded in assessment design from the outset (Mislevy, 2007). Interestingly, this design-first philosophy is widely applied across different fields. An interesting analogy is provided by Jana Begun in her article Privacy by Design: Building Data Protection into Systems from the Start, which explains how privacy considerations should be embedded into information systems from the very beginning rather than added later. Likewise, before we look in the mirror, broadly speaking we are already prepared to take action if something does not look right. In a similar way, what we expect assessment to achieve after the results are reported should be planned from the very beginning.
Obviously, when we look in a mirror, what we see is immediate. For example, if our tie is crooked or there is a stain on our shirt, we know exactly what to do next. Learning, however, is far less visible than our reflection in a mirror. If a student writes an essay and receives a grade of "C," that grade doesn't show them what to do next the way a mirror shows a crooked tie. Is the problem weak evidence, unclear organization, poor grammar, or a misunderstanding of the prompt itself? The grade is visible; the learning behind it is not. Assessment, then, should be designed to reveal that learning, so that the student and teacher are not left guessing at what needs fixing.
In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Snow White, the Queen understood that the mirror was telling the truth and immediately looked for a solution, although her methods were far from humane. The question for us is whether, as educators, policymakers, and assessment professionals, we can do a better job of finding solutions to close the gap between conducting assessments and acting on their results.
To answer that question, we first need to understand the deeper roots of the silence that often follows the release of assessment results.
Why Does This Gap Exist?
One reason this gap exists is that assessment systems have traditionally placed much greater emphasis on measurement than on improvement. Considerable time and expertise are devoted to developing assessment frameworks, writing high-quality items, supporting validity and reliability, and reporting scores. Yet far less attention is given to the equally important question of how those results will be interpreted and used by teachers, school leaders, learners, and policymakers.
Assessment should instead be developed as a coherent process that connects models of learning, assessment tasks, interpretation, and educational decision-making, rather than treated as an isolated test administration (National Research Council, 2001). A national assessment programme, for example, may invest years in piloting items and calibrating statistical models. Despite this investment, teachers may be left with only a single overall score and little guidance on what instructional steps should follow. The technical quality of the assessment may be high, but the usefulness of its reporting may remain limited.
In many systems, assessment is treated as the end of a process rather than the beginning of a new cycle of learning. As a result, valuable information can remain confined to reports and databases instead of informing classroom practice, curriculum refinement, or education policy. For instance, a school might receive detailed data showing that students consistently struggle with inferential reading questions, yet that finding may be filed away in a spreadsheet rather than used to adjust how reading comprehension is taught during the following term. An assessment result becomes educationally useful only when users can interpret it appropriately and connect it to a defensible course of action.
Fortunately, there are also encouraging examples of assessment being designed with action in mind. Formative assessment involves eliciting and using evidence of learning to help teachers adapt instruction and support learners in taking greater responsibility for their progress. Research has shown that strengthening formative assessment and feedback practices can produce improvements in learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Some jurisdictions have also developed reporting systems that link assessment outcomes directly to curriculum expectations, making it easier for teachers to identify specific strengths and learning needs. In Ontario, Canada, for example, assessment evidence informs School Improvement Plans, reflecting Michael Fullan's view that evidence should drive continuous improvement rather than merely measure achievement (Fullan, 2007; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2024).
Additionally, technology-enhanced assessments generate diagnostic reports that highlight patterns of misconceptions, learning progressions, and individual strengths, allowing targeted interventions; for example, sequencing items to align with a learning progression and designing distractors around known misconceptions can let a single assessment locate both where a student sits in their learning and what specific errors are holding them back (Ketterlin-Geller et al., 2019). In these examples, assessment goes beyond measurement to support learning, reporting, and the monitoring of progress.
What Can We Do?
We began our topic with two ideas: the games and the tale of Snow White. The games analogy helped us understand the concepts of validity and reliability in assessment. The Snow White analogy helped us see the importance of what we do after the assessment is done.
Now, a final note on the archery analogy. You probably guessed that the spectacle that unfolds before the audience depends on several elements working together. Like, the archer must hit the target precisely, the arrow must be very sharp, and the target must be constructed to hold the arrow. If the craftsman who prepared the target had used the wrong material or marked the target incorrectly, the archer's skill and the sharpness of the arrow would lose much of their value. Although the depth of assessment literacy differs across these roles, every stakeholder should be able to move from interpreting evidence to taking informed action. As in the story of archery, every element has a role in contributing to a successful shot. Let us continue evaluating each element that contributes to hitting the centre of the target with every attempt.
In the tale of Snow White, the magic mirror revealed the truth not only about Snow White but also about the Queen. In the same way, assessments reflect both students' learning and the work of teachers, parents/guardians, school leaders, and education officials. In each of these groups, the assessment report should answer the question of "What did we measure?" and "What should we do next?" To answer the latter question, each stakeholder needs an appropriate level of assessment literacy to look for and interpret the evidence correctly and translate it into effective action (Popham, 2018). For example, a teacher should expect reports designed for action, not just accept whatever the system provides, only then can they use results to adjust instruction. A parent/guardian should feel confident asking for further explanation on assessment reports, so they can support their child's learning at home. A school leader should expect performance-level descriptors that reveal learning gaps and guide improvement. A policymaker should push for a culture built on descriptors rather than numbers alone, using that evidence to shape policy and resource allocation.
Hopefully, if an archer from the World Nomad Games were ever to look into Snow White's magic mirror in some parallel world, they would welcome its honest reflection, use it to improve their performance, and remind us that, in education too, we should embrace assessment as both an arrow and a mirror - not only as a measure of achievement, but also as a catalyst for reflection, informed action, and continuous improvement.
About the Authors
Vali Huseyn
Vali is an educational assessment expert and quality auditor, recognized for promoting excellence and reform-driven scaling in assessment organizations. He mentors edtech & assessment firms on reform-aligned scaling by promoting measurement excellence, drawing on his field expertise, government experience, and regional network.
He holds a master’s degree in educational policy from Boston University (USA) and Diploma of Educational Assessment from Durham University (UK). Vali has supported national reforms in Azerbaijan and, through his consultancy with AQA Global Assessment Services, works with Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic to align assessment systems with international benchmarks such as CEFR, PISA, and the UIS technical criteria. He also works as a quality auditor in partnership with RCEC and most recently audited CENEVAL in Mexico. In addition, he promotes awareness of the use of technology across the assessment cycle through his work with Vretta. Fluent in Azerbaijani, Russian, Turkish, and English, he brings a deep contextual understanding to cross-country projects.
If you would like to discuss how assessment systems can better support learning, reporting, and progress, or promote the use of assessment evidence for educational decision-making, please feel free to contact Vali Huseyn at: vali@bu.edu | LinkedIn
Dan Koenig
Dan is the Chief Executive Officer of Ontario’s assessment agency, EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office). Under his leadership, EQAO's research and assessment programs have earned international recognition for their contribution to large-scale student assessment, including multiple awards from the e-Assessment Association (eAA). In 2026, Dan is welcoming assessment leaders from around the world to Toronto as EQAO hosts the 51st Annual IAEA Conference, themed "Trust, Transparency, and Technology in Educational Assessment."
Dan has served in the former Metro Separate School Board (MSSB) and the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) in a wide variety of roles, including teacher, principal, superintendent of curriculum and accountability, superintendent of schools, superintendent of human resources and labour relations, and, most recently, associate director of academic affairs and chief operating officer.
With over three decades of public service in education, Dan is a highly respected educator who previously served as a key member of the TCDSB’s senior leadership team. While serving as principal of St. Brendan Catholic School in 2007, he was named one of Canada’s Outstanding Principals. His professional journey demonstrates a deep passion for student-centric public education, comprehensive sector knowledge, and innovative leadership.
If you'd like to learn how assessment systems in Canada support learning, reporting, and progress, and promote the use of assessment evidence for educational decision-making elsewhere, feel free to contact Dan Koenig on LinkedIn
References
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