Reassessment gives students additional opportunities to demonstrate learning after feedback, additional instruction, and practice. In a standards-based grading system, reassessment is not simply retaking an assessment. It provides new evidence of learning that can contribute to a more current understanding of what a student knows and can do.
In Forefront, reassessment results can be entered without replacing the original assessment data. This allows educators to retain earlier evidence while documenting how student understanding changes over time. Learn more about how to gather reassessment results.
By default, reporting views display the most recent evidence of student learning. In time-series and other reporting views, educators can adjust these settings to display the earliest, highest, lowest, or most recent results. These options can be useful for examining student growth, comparing assessment results over time, or exploring the impact of instruction.
Why Reassessment Matters
Standards-based grading is intended to communicate a student’s current understanding of specific skills and concepts. Because learning develops over time, students may demonstrate different levels of understanding across multiple assessment opportunities.
Reassessment can help:
Give students opportunities to demonstrate learning after additional instruction or practice
Add new evidence aligned to the same standards
Provide a more current picture of student understanding
Preserve earlier evidence so educators can see changes in learning over time
Forefront uses multiple pieces of standards-aligned evidence to calculate proficiency, with more recent evidence receiving greater weight. This means new assessment evidence can have a greater influence on a student’s current proficiency while earlier evidence remains part of the student’s body of evidence. Learn more about Forefront’s proficiency algorithm.
Helpful Tip: You can click a standard in a student’s proficiency wheel to view the body of evidence contributing to that proficiency, including the weight assigned to individual assessments.
Before You Begin
Before establishing a reassessment policy, district teams should develop shared expectations for the purpose and use of reassessment.
Consider:
How does reassessment support the purpose of your grading system?
When should students have opportunities to reassess?
How many reassessment opportunities are appropriate?
What should students do before reassessing?
How should new evidence contribute to proficiency?
How will reassessment expectations remain consistent across classrooms and schools?
Establish Conditions for Reassessment
Districts may choose to establish expectations students should meet before reassessing. These structures can help ensure that reassessment follows additional learning rather than simply providing another attempt at the same task.
Possible expectations include:
Completing the original assessment
Completing additional practice or corrective work
Reflecting on errors or misconceptions
Participating in additional instruction or teacher-guided support
Demonstrating readiness to reassess
The appropriate expectations may vary by grade level, subject area, assessment type, or instructional context.
Helpful Tip: Keep reassessment requirements focused on supporting additional learning. Processes that become overly complicated may make reassessment difficult for teachers and students to use consistently.
Reassess Only What Is Needed
Reassessment does not always need to involve an entire assessment. In Forefront, a reassessment can include:
All students or selected students
The full assessment or selected questions
A complete or partial set of new scores
Each reassessment date is stored separately, allowing educators to retain the original results while adding new evidence. For step-by-step directions about the reassessment feature, see Entering Assessment Data in Forefront.
Consider Whether Earlier Evidence Should Be Excluded
Because more recent evidence receives greater weight in Forefront, districts should consider carefully whether earlier assessment data needs to be excluded from proficiency calculations.
In general, retaining more evidence creates a more complete body of evidence, while the recency calculation reduces the influence of older results over time. Forefront’s existing guidance recommends being thoughtful before excluding earlier assessment data.
Before excluding evidence, consider:
Does the earlier assessment still provide meaningful information about student learning?
Would retaining it help show growth over time?
Is the assessment measuring the same standard or expectation as the newer evidence?
Is there a specific reason the evidence should no longer contribute to proficiency?
For additional guidance, see When should I use "exclude proficiency" on an assessment?.
Account for Changes in Rigor Over Time
Later evidence does not always result in a higher proficiency level. As instruction progresses, assessments may ask students to demonstrate increasingly complex applications of a standard. This can be especially important when distinguishing between:
Expectations for what students should know at a particular point in instruction
End-of-year proficiency expectations
Assessments that increase in complexity over time
When content or expectations become more rigorous over time, later assessments may sometimes result in lower proficiency levels. This can be discouraging for teachers who want to see the impact of their instruction reflected in student outcomes, and confusing for families when a student who appeared to be doing well earlier in the year begins to struggle as expectations increase.
When reviewing reassessment results, consider:
Are the assessments measuring the same level of rigor?
Does the newer assessment require a more advanced application of the standard?
Are students being evaluated against current instructional expectations or end-of-year expectations?
What does the student’s broader body of evidence show?
Develop Consistent Expectations
A district reassessment framework should support a more accurate picture of student learning while also being practical for teachers to implement. As teams develop expectations for reassessment, it is important to consider not only whether students have opportunities to demonstrate additional learning, but also whether those opportunities are meaningful, equitable, and manageable across classrooms.
A strong reassessment framework should balance:
Accuracy: Does reassessment provide a more accurate picture of current student learning?
Equity: Do students have reasonable opportunities to demonstrate additional learning?
Rigor: Does reassessment follow additional instruction, practice, or reflection?
Manageability: Can teachers implement the process consistently without creating an unsustainable workload?
Consistency: Are expectations reasonably aligned across classrooms and schools?
Districts do not necessarily need identical reassessment procedures in every classroom. However, educators should share a common understanding of the purpose of reassessment, the conditions under which it is appropriate, and how new evidence should contribute to grading and reporting. Clear district-level guidance can help preserve teacher flexibility while ensuring that reassessment practices remain consistent with the overall goals of the grading system.
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