Summer Assessment Program

In June 2026, our school had about three weeks to give every incoming student an English and a Math diagnostic before August scheduling. That meant roughly 147 incoming 5th graders and new 6th to 8th graders, most of whom had never been on campus. Their results would decide which class each student joined and who needed extra support from the first day.

I was one of three teacher aides running the program. My part was reaching families, scheduling testing, proctoring, keeping the data straight, and writing the final report. This is how it came together.

Six teams shared the work. The division director made final placement decisions, and the program coordinator planned the assessments. IT set up student logins and Chromebooks, operations handled rooms and arrival, and food services planned breakfast and lunch. My team of teacher aides connected all of it to the families.

We used the week of June 29 to set up three testing classrooms, train with IT, check the roster and send the first notices home. Testing was split into two weeks by last name: A to L the week of July 6, and M to Z the week of July 13.

The first problem was simply getting families to confirm. Almost half preferred a language other than English: 79 households preferred English and 68 preferred Spanish, Arabic or Portuguese. I sent notices in each family's language, and families of students with IEPs or 504 plans got a separate notice explaining the accommodations available.

To keep track, I built one roster with a row for every family: their week, language, confirmed date, whether the confirmation went out, and notes from each call. A status column flagged anyone still unconfirmed, so each day started with a clear list of who to call next.

Each day ran from 8:00 breakfast through three testing blocks and lunch to a 3:00 pickup. Students picked up their school Chromebooks, got an introduction to campus, and left the program as soon as both diagnostics were done. Many finished early.

Each week had its own tracker. Students were pulled in from the roster and split into three equal groups, one for each classroom. As each diagnostic finished, I logged the score and placement level and took attendance. When a test was rushed or interrupted, we reset it and had the student retake it, so every score we kept was valid.

By July 17, 125 of 146 students had finished both diagnostics. The results told a clear story: in both subjects, the largest group placed one grade level below, and only about a third placed at or above grade level. Math had more students three or more grades behind, which mattered for planning fall support.

Among incoming 5th graders, 28 were flagged for extra math support and 20 for extra reading support. Instead of waiting for fall, staff used the testing weeks as a first chance to start closing those gaps.

The last step was splitting the 113 incoming 5th graders into four classes. The goal was that no class would be stronger or weaker than another, and that each would have a similar mix of girls and boys, students with IEPs and 504 plans, Black, Hispanic, White and Asian students, and English learners and English speakers.

I built a tracker that showed all four classes side by side and recalculated the moment a student moved. We could see right away when one class drifted out of balance and fix it before anything was final.

On July 17 I wrote the program summary report. It gave leadership completion numbers, placement results and suggested groupings, which they used to finalize the 2026–27 classes and plan fall intervention groups. The 20 students who missed both weeks were set to test when school started in August.

Some of the best results were not in the data. Students got a low-stakes first look at their new school, several early finishers asked to keep coming, and older students stepped in to help the new ones.