Join us September 29th for Benchmark in action: How districts are supporting English learner growth. Register for webinar
Blog
Building Ellevation Benchmark into your ELD program all year long
Blog
Building Ellevation Benchmark into your ELD program all year long
Every fall, many EL teams start back-to-school planning with one data point: last spring's summative assessment results. It's useful, but one that reflects where students were months earlier. A lot can change between spring and fall, and educators need more timely insight to understand where students are now and how best to support their continued language development in the upcoming year ahead.
That's the gap Ellevation Benchmark was built to close. Benchmark gives educators additional checkpoints throughout the year to understand English Language Proficiency (ELP) across all four language domains — reading, writing, listening, and speaking — so teams aren't waiting until spring to understand where students are and what they can do to make more informed instructional and program decisions.
But an assessment is only as useful as the plan behind it. Getting real value out of Benchmark isn't just about the testing day itself. It's about deciding how assessment insights will fit into the way your ELD program plans, supports, and monitors students throughout the year. Here's how to build Benchmark into your ELD program with intention.
Plan your testing cadence with intention
Districts can administer Benchmark up to three times a year, with each domain taking approximately 20 minutes. And because all four domains do not have to be assessed each time, teams can build a testing cadence around what they most need to understand at different points in the year. This helps reduce valuable time taken away from classroom instruction and testing fatigue for the students.
For example, one of our district administrators chose to schedule a two-week assessment window for all four domains at the beginning of the year, with plans to be more selective about the domains assessed later in the year, depending on student needs. She explained, “Coming up, we are not going to test the students in all four domains — which is another awesome thing that we love. If they are at the highest level in Listening, they shouldn’t be tested again.”
The goal isn’t simply to add more testing. It’s to give educators a regular, meaningful understanding of where their students are excelling and where they may need more support, while protecting instructional time and reducing unnecessary testing for students.
Connect Benchmark insights to program and instructional action
Benchmark's value isn't the score itself — it's what educators can do with it while there's still time in the year to act. Before testing begins, know how benchmark insights can inform program and instructional action.
Since Benchmark lives inside the same platform your team already uses for identification, placement, and documentation, results can flow seamlessly into Forms — such as within Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) — putting language growth data next to the planning and support work it's meant to inform, instead of in a siloed tool disconnected from day-to-day workflows. Teams can bring language development Goals, Benchmark results, and planning criteria together in one place, so a student's current proficiency is an active part of support conversations, not a separate step.
To visualize results, Benchmark growth data lives directly within the Student List and Dashboards, making it easier for educators to see how student proficiency is changing across assessment windows. Teams can quickly identify patterns of growth or regression, explore where students may need additional support, and use those insights to determine appropriate next steps throughout the year.
Benchmark insights can also help teachers determine what comes next in the classroom. Paired with Ellevation Strategies, teachers gain targeted ways to support students’ language development needs. By helping connect what benchmark results reveal about student proficiency to practical instructional approaches, teachers get valuable tools to use in the classroom to support continued growth.
Create a rhythm of reflection and adjustment throughout the year
The real value of Benchmark comes from what teams learn across multiple points in the school year. Each administration creates an opportunity to revisit what students need, understand where progress is happening, and determine whether instructional or program supports should evolve.
That can look different at each point in the year. Beginning of year results can help teams establish a more current baseline of where students are starting the year at. Middle and end of year administrations provide an opportunity to see what has changed, identify areas of growth or regression, and adjust supports or instruction accordingly.
Over time, that creates a more continuous cycle of insight and action — giving educators opportunities to respond to students throughout the year rather than relying on a single annual snapshot.
Want to hear how districts are actually doing this?
There’s no single right way to build benchmark assessments into an ELD program.
That’s why we're bringing together a few of our districts on September 29th to talk about exactly this: why they saw a need for an interim ELP assessment, how they've built Benchmark into their programs, and the value they expect it to create as the year goes on.
If you're planning your own Benchmark cadence for this year or are thinking about how a benchmark assessment could be a valuable addition to your ELD program, it's worth hearing how others have approached it.