Key Differences Between Benchmark and Diagnostic Assessments
by Anne-Evan Williams, LGL Director of Educational Development
With an ever-increasing emphasis on educational assessment, first under the auspices of the No Child Left Behind Act, and now even more through the growing implementation of the Response to Intervention (RtI) model, it is crucial for districts to differentiate between benchmark assessments and diagnostic assessments. While both types of assessment find their niche in the educational system, the reasons for their use and their outcomes vary significantly. For districts to ensure that they are using the right assessment to meet their needs, it’s important for administrators and teachers alike to differentiate between the two types of assessment.
The notion of benchmark testing has spread rapidly as states and districts have adopted standards and objectives in a range of subject areas such as reading, math, and science. These measures are designed to provide teachers, administrators, and others with information about student success in regards to mastery of standards, often assigned to grade levels. While such measures might be used for other purposes, it is important to keep in mind that such measures are designed to assess which academic grade-level benchmarks are successfully being met by students.
The key difference between benchmark testing and diagnostic assessment lies within the questions that they answer. Benchmark assessments answer the question what? What standards have the students achieved? What standards have not yet been met? What standards are not being addressed completely? Benchmark assessments are an efficient measure for predicting success on state achievement tests, as well as for screening students for possible placement in remediation programs. Benchmark assessments provide accountability at the classroom level which is then rolled up to the school level. They are designed to identify curriculum gaps.
With diagnostic assessment, the question that is answered is why? While benchmark assessments address the question of what a student knows, diagnostic assessments address the issue of why a student is achieving what they are achieving. Fully diagnostic assessments determine the why by breaking benchmarks down into fundamental skills and analyzing patterns of achievement across multiple measures. Such measures, for example, examine from different perspectives a set of skills or strategies so that patterns of error or miscues can be identified. This diagnostic perspective is tied to the specific goals and uses of a measure. Further, diagnostic assessments suggest instructional strategies that will help individual students, creating a “prescription” to accompany the diagnosis of each individual student.
Diagnostic assessment finds its place in education particularly in meeting the needs of struggling students. Diagnostic assessments provide detailed diagnosis of both student strengths and weaknesses, and may be aligned to multiple instructional solutions to provide differentiated instruction, particularly for remediation. Diagnostic assessment is efficient for progress monitoring for students who are below grade level, and not yet achieving state grade-level standards. Diagnostic assessment is also meaningful for accurately placing ELL students and secondary students into appropriate instructional paths.
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