Smarter Balanced Assessments, Score Reporting Terms and Definitions
- Achievement Level Descriptors, or ALDs, describe a student's overall content readiness in the core areas of ELA/literacy and mathematics for a specific grade level. ALDs communicate the meaning of test scores by specifying, in content terms, the knowledge, skills, and processes that student display at four levels of achievement.Achievement level scale scores are not always spaced evenly apart.
- Achievement Levels are categories that describe what a student knows and is able to do, based on the student's scale score on a test. The achievement levels on the Smarter Balanced summative tests are Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4.
- Assessment Claims are broad evidence based statements about what students know and can do as demonstrated by their performance on the assessments.
- Claim Performance Categories are derived based on a student's performance on the items contained in that claim. For each claim, students are assigned to one of three claim performance categories: Below Standard, Near Standard, or Above Standard.
- Scale Scores are the basic units of reporting. These scores fall along a continuous vertical scale from approximately 2000 to 3000 and increase across grade levels. The scale score can be used to illustrate students' current level of achievement and their growth over time.
