Restart Readiness Assessment Portal and
Benchmark Tests

The Ohio Department of Education recognizes the unprecedented effects on learning as a result of COVID-19 necessitate additional assessment support resources. Earlier this summer, the Department released student readiness toolkits that include curriculum and assessment materials that may help identify instructional gaps and determine instructional priorities.

Additionally, the Department, in conjunction with Cambium Assessment, Inc., is providing a suite of optional online assessments for educators to use in grades 3 through high school. The Restart Readiness Assessments, available for English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies, are designed to help schools and districts identify student progress early and receive actionable performance data. These assessments, which may be offered remotely, will be administered using systems with which Ohio educators and students are familiar from the administration of Ohio’s State Tests.  

The Ohio Restart Readiness Assessment Portal is now available to districts and schools. The portal contains links to the new benchmark tests, the new Centralized Reporting System and associated resources for each.

Benchmark Tests

The Benchmark Tests are full-length assessments utilizing released test items that mirror the content and test characteristics of Ohio’s State Tests in terms of length, test specifications, blueprints, available tools, item types, and difficulty and breadth of learning standards coverage.

Benchmark tests are machine-scored, allowing for near real-time reporting to give teachers rapid access to results and use the same testing platform with which students and educators are already familiar. Results are reported in a new, innovative reporting system—the Centralized Reporting System. Ohio educators are already familiar with the data this system provides, such as performance levels and item-level data. New features include a view of students’ actual work and responses to each test item, the ability to score items and access to data to pinpoint improvement areas throughout the school year. This system is now available to districts and schools.

Informing Instruction

The Benchmark Tests can be used in the following ways.

• Help students become familiar with the testing environment and types of item interactions that they will encounter on the actual state assessments. This may be particularly important for grade 5 students because this will be the first science assessment they take. The style of science items is somewhat different from those of the English language arts and math items with which most students encountered in grade 3 and/or grade 4.
• For English language arts and math, grades 4–8 teachers can choose to administer the previous grade level benchmarks to gather information on student understanding of previous grade level content prior to beginning classroom instruction. Because science assessments are administered only three times in non-consecutive years and because the specific science topics covered change from grade level to grade level, the benchmark assessment will not pinpoint learning gaps from previous years.
• Provide teachers with concept-specific data so that learning plans can be developed to meet each student’s individual needs.
  • Because the benchmarks are machine scored and can generate reports, they can be used to inform instruction with the whole class, small groups and/or individual students.Provide data that reflects areas with which a student or class may need intervention or reteaching.
• Determine mastery of standards.
• Provide information to teacher-based teams about quarterly assessments.

Resources for each benchmark test, as well as the Centralized Reporting System, are available on the portal. Additional resources, as well as the new checkpoint assessments, will be available later this month.

If you have questions about the Restart Readiness Assessments, please contact the Office of Assessment at statetests@education.ohio.gov.