Grades 3鈥�8 Assessment Solutions That Connect Learning to Instruction
New Meridian’s ProgressGuide Assessment is a comprehensive, instructionally focused assessment system for 3-8 English language arts and mathematics. ProgressGuide supports classroom formative assessment practices by providing short, prebuilt, on-demand “testlets” that assess individual standards or coherent groups of standards as they are taught. Near real-time reporting enables teachers to check student learning and adjust instruction.
Unlike typical interim assessments that only sample across core topics, the granularity of ProgressGuide’s assessment design and reporting supports meaningful instructional decision-making aligned to mastery of specific standards. ProgressGuide Math also identifies misconceptions that are inhibiting students’ conceptual understanding and procedural fluency.
ProgressGuide’s reporting dashboards enable teachers and instructional teams to group students by standards mastery and target differentiated instruction, reteaching, or extension activities. Reporting aggregates from individual students and classrooms to school- and district-level summaries, helping administrators identify common learning needs and inform professional learning, curriculum planning, and the assignment of specialist supports.
Grades 3-8
ProgressGuide for grades 3-8 measures students’ developing mastery of individual standards or coherent groups of standards as they are taught. Flexible scheduling and on-demand administration support formative assessment practices in the classroom, enabling teachers to check student learning and adjust instruction. Near real-time reporting provides timely, actionable data at the student and classroom level, enabling teachers to group students by standards mastery and target differentiated instruction, reteaching, or extension activities. Reporting aggregates from individual students and classrooms to school- and district-level summaries, helping administrators identify common learning needs and inform professional learning, curriculum planning, and the assignment of specialist supports.
ProgressGuide ELA for grades 3-8
Readers construct meaning from texts through a holistic set of interconnected skills whereby readers analyze word meaning, language structure, text structures, and rhetorical contexts to understand the world of the text that the author has created. Readers connect these worlds to their own background knowledge through inferencing and verbal reasoning—confirming, challenging, and extending their own knowledge and perspectives. The Scarborough reading rope is a popular representation of these interconnected skills that—when applied in context of available background knowledge—enable readers to construct meaning from texts.
ProgressGuide ELA for grades 3–8 uses passage-based item sets for both literary and informational texts that allow students to demonstrate interconnected reading and language skills across five strands:
- Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
- Knowledge of Language
- Key Ideas and Details
- Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
- Craft and Structure
Reports show students’ developing proficiency in each strand and their mastery of the specific ELA standards within it. Reporting at both levels gives educators actionable detail while supporting coherent comprehension instruction, rather than encouraging isolated practice on discrete skills outside the context of meaningful texts. The ELA reading testlets follow a recommended sequence through the year as they include texts of increasing complexity and present students with increasingly sophisticated reading comprehension tasks.
The ELA writing performance tasks measure written expression and extended thinking. Students are asked to integrate ideas, organize information, and produce a response that demonstrates their understanding, reasoning, and ability to communicate ideas clearly and effectively. Tasks are grade-appropriate prompts based on a warm read of a reading passage encountered in a previous reading testlet.
ProgressGuide Mathematics for grades 3-8
Mathematics standards and curriculum programs organize math instruction into coherent progressions of related concepts and skills, allowing them to be taught and assessed in focused, topic-based units. Although research supports that some instructional sequences are more coherent and accessible than others, curriculum publishers organize those sequences differently, resulting in significant variation in the order and timing
The testlests in ProgressGuide Mathematics for grades 3-8 therefore target individual standards or coherent groups of standards as they are taught, such as comparing and finding equivalent fractions or writing and interpreting numerical expressions. The testlets can be sequenced in any order and administered on demand according to the local scope and sequence, thereby supporting classroom formative assessment practices that enable teachers to check student learning and adjust instruction.
ProgressGuide Mathematics also identifies misconceptions that are inhibiting students’ conceptual understanding and procedural fluency. Test items and distractor options are purposefully constructed to disclose misconceptions relevant to the topic. Reports show identified misconceptions as well as standards mastery.
FAQ
ProgressGuide is New Meridian's interim assessment solution designed to provide educators with timely evidence of student learning throughout the school year. Districts use ProgressGuide to monitor progress toward grade-level standards, identify learning gaps, and make instructional decisions that support student growth.
ProgressGuide goes beyond measuring achievement at a single point in time. The assessment system is designed to provide actionable information about student learning progress, helping educators understand not only whether students are meeting expectations, but also what they are ready to learn next.
ProgressGuide provides timely reporting that allows educators, school leaders, and district administrators to review student performance shortly after testing. The reports highlight strengths, learning needs, and trends that can inform instruction, intervention planning, and resource allocation.
Yes. ProgressGuide is designed to align with state academic standards and can support district efforts to strengthen instruction, monitor implementation of curriculum, evaluate interventions, and track student growth across schools and grade levels.
ProgressGuide helps educators identify students who may need additional support, monitor the impact of interventions, and track progress over time. The data can be used alongside other local measures to support MTSS, intervention planning, and student success initiatives.