Charles County Public Schools presents results and classroom uses for district common assessments

Charles County Public Schools officials reviewed the district'wide common assessment program and winter results at the April 8 Board of Education meeting, saying the assessments are intended as formative, point-in-time measures to guide instruction and pacing.

School leaders said the common assessments are meant to "look at instructional implications" and help teachers "circle back" to standards students have not mastered, not to replace state tests, Superintendent Maria Navarro and assessment staff said.

Kevin Lowndes, chief of teaching and learning, told the board the assessments exist to "monitor the curriculum" and "to get our students to understand the type of test, questions that are gonna be on the state test." He said the district uses the assessments to check pacing, depth of student knowledge and to expose students to technology used on state tests. "The common assessments are a formative assessment, and they are measuring in that point in time a standard that's being taught within their curriculum," Lowndes told the board.

Lowndes and content specialists outlined how the data are used at each level. Kim…