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School assessments

School assessments can help you identify the areas in which your child is struggling and what can be done to help.

Schools are assessing students' performance regularly throughout the school year.

Talk to the teacher about your child's assessment results.

Image of a checklist on a clipboard

  • This can help you identify what your child is struggling with, and how you and the school can help.
  • You will hear this term: "performing at grade level". This means a student can show they have learned the skills that they should be learning in their grade.  

 

These are the tests that can tell if a child is making progress as expected:

LEAP 2025 Assessments:

  • LEAP = The Louisiana Education Assessment Program
  • These are the statewide performance assessments. They include tests for a variety of subjects.
  • They are tests given every Spring to all Louisiana students in grades 3-12.
  • They can tell how well a student is meeting the expectations for their grade level, and identify when they need extra support.

Benchmark Assessments:

  • These are done a few times a year and can tell if your child is on track and keeping up with the expectations of what they should be learning in the grade.
  • Each school can choose their own benchmark assessments. Ask the teacher which one they use and ask for a report after each time they do it.

Curriculum-based Assessments:

  • These are the immediate snapshots of how your child is doing with the lessons in their class at any given time.
  • The teacher will do these from week to week. They can tell if a child is not keeping up, and identify problem areas.
  • These ones will be the most useful to track your child's progress from week to week. Ask every couple weeks how your child is doing on these.

These should all help the teacher know where your child needs more help.

  • Ask about them, make sure you understand what they say about your child's progress, and keep checking on them.

What if the school assessments show that my child is not keeping up?

Image of a Parent and child meeting with a teacher

Meet with the teacher and ask to put some interventions in place. See the next section Working with the school.


Click the link at the bottom of the page to download short fact sheets about the LEAP Assessments and reports. (They will open in a new window or appear in the bottom corner of your screen.)

 

What if the assessments don't match the grades?

If your child is getting good grades, but does poorly on the school assessments, talk to the teacher. The assessments are the ones that matter most. They will tell if your child is on track to build the skills they need for the next grade.

Click on the box to learn more:

If the assessments and grades tell different stories

  • We've been talking about standarized assessments. This means  that every child in the school gets the same test. These are the ones that truly show if a child is at grade level.
  • There are also regular tests, quizzes, projects and homework that teachers grade to see how a student is doing. The grades on the report card are based on these. Different teachers may grade these differently. (Sometimes they may grade assignments a little higher to avoid upsetting a student who struggles.)
  • If your child is getting good grades but does not do well on the assessments, you should find out why. 
    • It could be the testing environment or type of test. Talk to your child to see what they think. Are they more anxious for one type of test or the other? Is one harder or covers things they have more trouble with?
    • It could be that the teacher is grading generously.
    • Either way, talk to the teacher and find out. 
  • The assessments are the bottom line: these are the ones that you should pay attention to. If your child does not do well, you should talk to the school about making a plan to help.

Learn more:

If you want to see the kinds of things that the school expects students to know in different grades, click here to see the LEAP 2025 Practice Tests. (Scroll down to Practice Tests and pick your child's grade and the subject you want to see.)

Click on the links below to learn more about the statewide performance test and what's expected in different grades:

 

Sources: LDOE, Learning Heroes, Great Schools