What Education Leaders Need to Know About Interim Science Assessments 

March 31, 2026

Assessments are a constant in schools, but many teachers and leaders say the information they get back isn’t specific enough to guide next steps. WestEd’s recent Leading Together webinar explores interim science assessment: what innovative science assessment looks like and how leaders can use it to strengthen their local systems. 

Led by Jenny Sarna, Project Director of NextGenScience at WestEd, and Jill Wertheim, Director of SCALE Science at WestEd, the session delves into the gaps in current assessment practice and offers a promising path forward. 

Why Is the Middle of the Assessment System the Weakest Link?

Jill Wertheim opened the conversation with a frank observation: No one is satisfied with where science assessment stands today. Students spend significant instructional time on assessments whose value for teaching and learning is often vague or unclear.

Wertheim described assessment as a coherent system or a funnel that ranges from daily classroom assessments on the wide end to infrequent state-level assessments on the narrow end. In the middle of it all sit end-of-unit and quarterly interim assessments.

The trouble is that the middle layer is often the weakest link. District leaders report wanting deeper, more actionable insights into what’s happening in classrooms, but many existing interim assessments are designed primarily to predict performance on state exams, not to help teachers teach better. SCALE Science has been working to fill that gap.

What Do Students and Teachers Actually Need From Assessment?

Before developing any new assessments, Wertheim and team conducted a national listening tour with teachers, district leaders, and researchers. What she heard shaped everything that followed.

Interest holders didn’t want an assessment that covered every standard; they wanted one that focused on the ideas that matter most for student learning. They emphasized the need for flexibility and something user-friendly that wouldn’t add to an already overwhelming workload. Crucially, they also wanted assessments that did a better job of capturing the learning of Multilingual Learners and students with IEPs.

The vision that emerged was an assessment that is instructionally supportive rather than merely predictive and that helps teachers use student data meaningfully.

Three Parts, One Coherent Design 

The resulting assessment, rather than being an individual test, uses a combination of whole-class, small-group, and individual structures to elicit varying evidence of student thinking.  

Part 1: Introducing a New Phenomenon (Whole Class). The assessment begins by presenting students with a meaningful, real-world problem. Teachers guide students through a routine to explore why the phenomenon matters and how it connects to their own experiences. Students then revisit core ideas from prior instruction, discussing together how what they’ve learned might apply to this new context. A co-constructed model stays visible throughout the entire assessment to support student work. 

Part 2: Collaborative Sense-Making (Small Groups). The most complex parts of the task happen in small groups, where students can share language, talk through data, and work on modeling together. While students collaborate, teachers circulate with an observational rubric, gathering evidence of learning through both student discourse and written or drawn products. This structure is especially powerful for students who may not demonstrate their thinking on a written test alone. 

Part 3: Individual Synthesis. In the final part, students work independently to record what they’ve figured out about the phenomenon. They are encouraged to write, draw, and incorporate data as they synthesize their thinking. This individual work is also scored as evidence of learning. 

How Do You Turn All That Data Into Action? 

Collecting rich evidence of student thinking is only valuable if teachers can actually use it. To address this, the team developed an app to simplify the rubric process, making it easier for teachers to interpret the wide range of responses that open-ended tasks generate. 

The app summarizes individual student performance on both the group and individual portions of the task, highlighting specific strengths and areas for growth tied to the standards being assessed. Whole-class reports give teachers a visual snapshot of where students are across granular pieces of each standard, enabling targeted next steps. Critically, the reports don’t just describe where students are—they guide teachers toward what to do next, pointing to the upcoming unit and suggesting on-ramps to support continued growth. 

Learn More 

Explore WestEd’s NextGenScience and SCALE Science projects to learn more about supporting high-quality science assessment in your district. Watch the full webinar and explore other sessions in the Leading Together series.