Blog
Grounded in insight, built for growth: Ellevation Benchmark rounds out unified ELD solution
Blog
Grounded in insight, built for growth: Ellevation Benchmark rounds out unified ELD solution
For years, educators supporting multilingual learners have relied on Ellevation to bring clarity to complex data and compliance workflows. Today, we’re excited to introduce Ellevation Benchmark – the newest addition to our platform and the missing piece of our unified ELD solution educators and students deserve.
At Ellevation, our mission remains constant: help every English Learner achieve their highest aspirations. With Benchmark, educators can finally replace delayed insights and fragmented assessment data with a cohesive approach to measure language proficiency growth throughout the year – connecting those insights directly to action. Student data, compliance, instruction, family engagement, and benchmark insights now come together in one place – giving districts a cohesive, year-round way to understand progress, adjust instruction, and support students with confidence.
The Challenge: Progress you can’t see in time to act
Understanding a student’s English language development shouldn’t depend on a once-a-year snapshot. Yet, most educators rely on state mandated summative ELP assessments that return results late in the school year. This leaves teachers little time to take insights into account and tailor instruction to meet their students’ needs.
This “black box” between annual assessments leaves educators asking the same questions year after year: Are my students growing? Are our supports working? Are my students on track for reclassification? Without timely, accurate, and EL-specific progress data connected to instructional, decision-making becomes a process of piecing together incomplete, misaligned signals rather than acting on clear, actionable insight.
Ellevation Benchmark was built to change that – bridging EL program management and instructional impact to help educators meet student needs in real time.
A purpose built assessment for multilingual learners
We set out to design an assessment that captured multiple snapshots without being too time-intensive, a challenge that we know can sometimes be the experience of many students taking both required summative assessments and other interim solutions. Through a rigorous cross-consortia analysis, we mapped proficiency descriptors to language tasks that reflect the expectations of each consortium. Districts will get reliable, actionable results that clearly align to the framework their state uses.
A core challenge in assessing multilingual learners is ensuring tasks are appropriate for their stage of language development. A newcomer experiencing a test written for advanced learners can feel overwhelmed, while an advanced student taking a test written for beginners may never encounter the level of challenge needed to demonstrate growth.
Benchmark is designed to measure language use in meaningful, developmentally appropriate ways. Using research-based design principles and informed by each student’s most recent summative ELP assessment, Benchmark ensures students are presented with tasks aligned to their current proficiency. Behind the scenes, this approach adapts the assessment experience so students encounter questions that reflect what they are ready to demonstrate, without unnecessary complexity or artificial constraints.
The result is an assessment experience that feels appropriate and focused for students, reduces anxiety, supports engagement, and produces more accurate, instructionally relevant measures of language growth.
Timely insights that drive action
As EL programs grow more complex, districts need assessments that are both instructionally meaningful and operationally feasible – seamlessly embedded within the same platform educators already use to manage student data, compliance, and instructional support. Ellevation Benchmark provides a clear, reliable way to measure language proficiency progress in the moments that matter most.
- Flexible domain testing: Within each testing window, teams can choose which domains – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – to administer. Whether focusing on a single language skill or assessing all four, Benchmark adapts to shifting priorities, program goals, and student needs.
- Short, 20-minute assessments: Each domain is administered in a focused, lightweight session. This keeps students engaged, reduces testing fatigue, and protects instructional time.
- Up to 3 administrations per year: Instead of waiting for annual summative results, educators gain timely checkpoints that capture growth throughout the entire school year. Teachers can tailor instruction based on reliable insights and meet students where they are.
- Proficiency levels that match your state: Benchmark is built and scored to reflect the proficiency framework your state uses, ensuring results are meaningful and easy to compare.
- Ellevation-scored assessments: All scoring is handled by Ellevation, producing fast, consistent and reliable results that educators can trust – without burdening them with hours spent scoring.
- Integrated student profiles: Benchmark data flows directly into each learner’s Ellevation profile, giving educators one unified view of proficiency, growth, and relevant instructional insights.
- Seamless, secure SSO access: Students log in through platforms they already know, such as Clever or Classlink, removing friction, extra steps, and preventable testing disruptions.
“I often compare Ellevation Benchmark to preventative medical care. Regular check-ins with a doctor allow professionals to identify concerns early – before they become larger issues – and also provide opportunities to celebrate improvement. Ellevation Benchmark offers that same advantage. Instead of waiting for one high-stakes, once-a-year data point, we can monitor progress throughout the year. The return on investment comes from better instructional targeting, more responsive programming decisions, and ultimately, stronger student outcomes. It supports both early identification and early celebration.”
River Trails, IL
A unified ELD solution, built to transform student growth
For years, you’ve trusted Ellevation to bring clarity to the EL data you have and help you take action to support your students. With the arrival of Ellevation Benchmark, we’re closing a critical gap, bringing timely, language growth measurement into the nation’s leading K-12 software solution for English learners and the educators who serve them. The result is a unified ELD solution every EL program deserves.
The arrival of Benchmark means educators can now measure student proficiency growth throughout the year and connect those insights directly into action. Meaning student data, instruction, families, and benchmark insights now come together into one place. With Benchmark, Ellevation enhances the ability to collaborate across teams, understand where students are in their language journey, and meet their needs with data-driven, tailored instruction. It’s the missing piece many educators have been waiting for – transforming data into clarity, and clarity into meaningful impact.
“By the time we use ACCESS data, it is usually at the beginning of the next year where 9 months have passed. There has been so much language growth within that time. This will drastically change how we approach our instruction because it will be real-time data.”
Taunton, MA
We invite you to learn more about Ellevation Benchmark and join us for an informational webinar on February 18th.
Gabby Glumac is a Product Marketing Manager who supports go-to-market initiatives focused on delivering actionable data to educators through solutions like Ellevation’s benchmark assessment. When she’s not working, you’ll likely find her riding her horse, hiking, spending time at the beach, or trying out a new recipe in the kitchen.