Assessments are more than just a measure of student learning—they should be a tool for growth, reflection, and engagement. As schools rethink traditional assessment models, incorporating student feedback into assessment design is critical in ensuring that evaluations are not just tests but meaningful learning experiences.
Our team has explored how student input can enhance assessments, making them more relevant, engaging, and actionable. By prioritizing student voice, we aim to create assessments that not only evaluate learning but enhance it. Their feedback provides insight into what works, what feels meaningful, and what might be missing.
We collaborate with students in a variety of ways, including our Student Advisory Group comprised of 6th-12th graders, by engaging in the following activities:
ANet facilitators are intentional about ensuring students find this to be a valuable and empowering experience–the time with students continues to be collaborative as ANet approaches this work to co-design assessment items with students.
Through these methods, we've gained more profound insights into student engagement and identified ways to refine assessment design to better support learning.
A key takeaway from our work is that assessments should not just be endpoints—they should be part of the learning process. This means designing assessments that engage, motivate, and provide student choice. We saw two themes in student engagement and motivation.
Choice and Autonomy in Assessments: Choice and autonomy involve students demonstrating their understanding with questions and methods that match their learning style. Students are provided with multiple problems that assess one specific learning concept and they can choose the topic, format, or method of demonstraing understanding that appeals most to them.
After our co-designing sessions, students expressed excitement about choice in their assessment content:
Increased Engagement through Choice: Students unanimously agreed (100%) that offering choices in texts and prompts made assessments more engaging and allowed them to better demonstrate their understanding/show what they know.
Empowerment through Flexibility: They emphasized that flexibility in selecting content fosters a sense of ownership, making the assessment process feel more meaningful and personal.
Increased Confidence: The option to select problems helped students demonstrate their strengths and boosted their confidence in math.Enhanced Effort and Motivation: The ability to select topics they resonated with made students feel more motivated and willing to invest effort.
"There has been such a positive reaction where students have felt more engaged, more motivated, more empowered when given choice in assessment content in both ELA and Math,” said Giselle Youssef, Senior Content Specialist at ANet. "I expected there to be positive feedback, but I think it's been received even better than I might have expected. Students really leaned into the opportunity to say, ‘This item will allow me to better show my teacher what I know,’ and they felt really empowered and excited by that."
Real-World Connections: Real-world connections in assessments link directly to students’ experiences and future aspirations, making evaluations feel more relevant.
Marie Kodama, ANet Senior Content Specialist, shared an experience during one of the student reflection sessions in which a student became motivated to learn more. After sharing a math passage with the student that cited data on housing costs in an area, one student asked where they got that data and how they could learn more about it.
They said, “The second question addressed a topic I found more interesting. Affordable housing in Boston has become a crucial concern lately, which is why it caught my attention.” The student’s interest affirms our goal of assessments becoming tools for learning rather than of learning.
Students shared positive responses toward real-world context in assessment questions.
Representation and Relevance: Specific content resonated with students and made the material more engaging and relatable for them.
Broader Perspectives: Students valued stories that connected to their own studies or interests.
Variation for Learning Preferences: Offering a variety of question types was seen as critical for accommodating different learning preferences.
“When there’s more real-world context around the assessment, they felt more invested to learn,” shared Marie.
We’ve seen that when we give students choice, real-world context, and autonomy, it shifts their mindset during an assessment from just trying to get it done to wanting to engage with the material in front of them and do a good job. Treating assessments as learning opportunities helps students become more invested in their educational journey.
Collecting feedback from students is only the first step—what truly matters is how we continue collaborating with students to enhance experiences and instructional practices.
As we continue to work side-by-side with students and teachers, here are some of the ways we ensure assessment data drives meaningful change:
Refining Assessment Design: We adjust question types, length, and formats based on student responses to improve clarity and engagement.
Informing Instructional Strategies: Student performance and feedback highlight areas where teaching approaches may need to be adjusted.
Personalizing Learning Paths: By analyzing assessment data, educators can identify individual student needs and tailor instruction accordingly.
When designed with student feedback in mind, assessments become powerful tools for improving learning outcomes and teaching effectiveness.
Our exploration of student feedback in assessment design has reinforced the importance of ongoing dialogue between students and educators. By continuing to prioritize student voice, we can create assessments that are not only more effective but also more empowering.
As we move forward, our focus remains on making assessments an integral part of the learning process—ensuring they are engaging, empowering, and actionable for all students.
How does your school center students on assessments? We’d love to hear your insights and experiences as we work toward a more student-centered approach to evaluation.