EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT 

Assessments under Title I, Part A & Title I, Part B: Summary of Final Regulations

High-quality assessments are essential to effectively educating students, measuring progress, and 

promoting equity. Done well and thoughtfully, they provide critical information for educators, families, 

the public, and students themselves and create the basis for improving outcomes for all learners. Done 

poorly, in excess, or without clear purpose, however, they take valuable time away from teaching and 

learning, and may drain creative approaches from our classrooms. In October 2015, President Obama 

announced a Testing Action Plan to restore balance to America’s classrooms by ensuring fewer, better, 

and fairer tests.

Consistent with the President’s plan, and as the U.S. Department of Education (Department) supports 

states in implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we are focused on promoting a highquality, well-rounded education for every student while ensuring critical protections and equity of 

opportunity for all students.

Today, the Department is releasing two Notices of Final Regulations (NFRs) that implement provisions of 

Title I of the ESSA, ensuring states administer high-quality, annual assessments that are worth taking and 

provide meaningful data about student success, while also encouraging states and districts to continue to 

push the field of assessment forward through innovation.

The Title I, part A NFR addresses annual statewide assessments, with the goals of clarifying new 

flexibilities for states and districts to reduce testing; maintaining effective protections to preserve 

students’ civil rights to ensure assessments are fair; and maximizing the positive impact of transparent, 

consistent information about student success and progress. The Title I, part B NFR outlines how States 

can leverage the new innovative assessment demonstration authority in the ESSA, which will enable 

up to seven states to re-think their testing systems and pilot new approaches—helping to develop the next 

generation of statewide assessments.

“High-quality assessments are a critical tool that can help educators, parents, and policymakers promote 

educational equity by highlighting achievement gaps, especially for our traditionally underserved 

students, and that can spur instructional improvements that benefit all our children. At the same 

time, where too much focus has been placed on testing, educators, parents, and students have rightly 

highlighted the need for more creativity and innovation,” said U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King 

Jr. “Our final regulations strike a balance by offering states flexibility to eliminate redundant testing and 

promote innovative assessments, while ensuring assessments continue to contribute to a well-rounded 

picture of how students and schools are doing.”

Background on ESSA’s Testing Provisions 

Passage of the ESSA

Passed with bipartisan support and signed by President Obama in December 2015, the ESSA requires 

states and districts to ensure that all students, including children with disabilities, English learners, and 

other historically underserved groups, graduate high school ready for college or a career. To measure 

progress against that goal and maintain a critical focus on educational equity and excellence for all, the 

law maintains the requirement that states administer to all students annual statewide assessments in 

reading/language arts and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school, as well as assessments once

in each grade span in science for all students and annual English language proficiency assessments in 

grades K-12 for all English learners. The law also includes important protections to ensure that all 

students are tested, offered appropriate accommodations when needed, and held to the same high 

standards. The ESSA also provides several new flexibilities to help states develop innovative approaches 

to assessments and reduce duplicative, unnecessary testing.
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Negotiated Rulemaking and Proposed Regulations

In March and April 2016, the Department conducted negotiated rulemaking sessions on Title I, part A 

assessment regulations, consistent with the requirements of the ESSA. Through that process, a team of 

negotiators, including teachers, principals, other school leaders, and paraprofessionals, parents, students,

state and local education leaders, Tribal leaders, and the civil rights and business communities, developed

and came to consensus on proposed regulations in order to support states, districts, and schools in 

implementing the ESSA’s requirements for high-quality state assessment systems and the new 

flexibilities afforded in the law. The Department then published for public comment the proposed

regulations consisting of the consensus-based language for assessments under Title I, part A.

At the same time, the Department also published proposed regulations regarding the innovative 

assessment demonstration authority under Title I, part B (which was not subject to negotiated rulemaking)

clarifying the rules and expectations for states wishing to pilot new and innovative ways to measure 

student knowledge and abilities that will then be scaled statewide.

Final Regulations

Today, the Department announces final regulations regarding assessment provisions under both Title I, 

part A and Title I, part B. In response to public comments, the final regulations on Title I, part A include a 

number of changes, including:

• Streamlining the criteria for evaluating state requests for waivers to exceed the cap on the 

percentage of children with the most significant cognitive disabilities who take an alternate 

assessment aligned with alternate academic achievement standards;

• Clarifying the parameters for the use of Native American language assessments in a Native 

American language school or program.

In response to public comments, the final regulations on Title I, part B include a number of changes, 

including:

• Clarifying that an innovative assessment may include items above or below a student’s grade 

level so long as the State measures each student’s academic proficiency based on the challenging 

State academic content standards for the grade in which the student is enrolled;

• Providing additional information on how a state may demonstrate that the innovative assessments 

and state assessments provide comparable results;

• Clarifying that states need to ensure that districts and schools participating in the innovative 

assessment demonstration pilot are providing comparable results to one another. Together, we 

believe these changes in the final regulations help clarify provisions in the new law and will aid 

states and districts in implementing high-quality assessments.

Supporting Flexibility for States and Districts and Promoting High Expectations for All Students: 

Title I, Part A

General Statutory Requirements

• ESSA requires that states establish college-and career-ready standards and maintain high 

expectations when assessing all students against those standards. These regulations support 

innovation and flexibility while maintaining a high bar for quality of the tests states use to 

assess all students against state-developed college- and career-ready expectations.

• States must assess all students, including by offering appropriate accommodations for English 

learners and children with disabilities, and, to the extent practicable, must develop assessments 

using the principles of universal design for learning, which intentionally reduce barriers and 

improve flexibility in how students receive information or demonstrate knowledge.

• Tests must measure higher-order thinking skills, such as reasoning, analysis, complex problem 

solving, critical thinking, effective communication, and understanding of challenging content.
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• States have flexibility to develop new assessment designs, which may include a series of 

multiple statewide interim assessments during the course of the academic year that result in a 

single summative assessment score (sometimes described as “modular” assessments).

Flexibility for locally selected, nationally recognized high school academic assessments

• Under ESSA and these regulations, a state may permit districts to use a nationally recognized 

high school academic assessments in place of the statewide high school assessment; a district 

using this flexibility, however, must use the same locally selected, nationally recognized 

assessment in all of its high schools.

• To ensure these tests are truly “nationally recognized,” the regulations clarify they must be given

in multiple states, be recognized by institutions of higher education for the purposes of entrance 

or placement into courses in postsecondary education or training programs, and provide the same 

benefits to all students – including English learners and children with disabilities.

• To ensure the assessment a district uses under this flexibility meets the needs of the community,

districts requesting to use a locally selected, nationally recognized high school academic 

assessment must consult with stakeholders and notify parents of its plans.

• States will review tests that districts request to use as a nationally recognized assessment in order 

to ensure the tests are of strong technical quality. Assessments selected under this flexibility are 

also subject to assessment peer review, as are all statewide assessments under Title I, part A.

Eliminating unnecessary testing

• Consistent with flexibility in the ESSA, the regulations allow students taking advanced 

mathematics courses in eighth grade to avoid unnecessary, redundant testing by allowing those 

students to take the assessment typically administered to high school students enrolled in that

course, if their state uses end-of-course tests in high school and the course taken in eighth grade 

is aligned with the tested high school course.

• To ensure opportunities are fairly distributed, states that choose to utilize this flexibility must 

describe strategies to provide all students the opportunity to be prepared for and to take 

advanced mathematics coursework in middle school.

Assessing students with the most significant cognitive disabilities on alternate assessments aligned with 

alternate academic achievement standards

• To ensure that the vast majority of students take a state’s general assessment and only students 

with the most significant cognitive disabilities take an alternate assessment aligned with 

alternate academic achievement standards, the ESSA limits the number of students who may 

take such assessments to 1 percent of all tested students in a given subject. There is no cap on 

individual schools or districts.

• The law allows a state to request a waiver of this 1 percent cap and the regulations provide

states greater clarity relating to the criteria for approving these requests to ensure that waivers 

are reserved for exceptional situations, in which states need to assess additional students with 

the most significant cognitive disabilities with such assessments and that waiver requests provide

transparent state-level information on the number and percentage of students, including by 

subgroup, taking the alternate assessment.

• Recognizing that a state should do everything it can to ensure students are being held to the 

appropriate standards and that only students with the most significant cognitive disabilities should 

be taking the alternate assessment aligned with alternate achievement standards, and to ensure 

that it is making substantial progress toward reducing the percentage to fewer than 1 percent, the 

regulations require a state seeking a waiver to have a plan of action to meet the 1 percent limit in 

the future.
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• Consistent with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), states must have 

guidelines for Individualized Education Program (IEP) teams in determining on a case-by-case 

basis whether a student is most appropriately assessed with an alternate assessment aligned with 

alternate academic achievement standards.

• The regulations highlight the critical state role in ensuring that general and special education 

teachers, paraprofessionals, teachers of English learners, and other appropriate staff receive 

necessary training so that they know how to administer alternate assessments and make use of 

appropriate accommodations to support students with disabilities.

Supporting English learners and Native American students

• The regulations clarify that states must administer a single statewide English language

proficiency assessment to all English learners (ELs) in grades K-12, consistent with existing 

state practice.

• States must ensure that English learners are included in academic instruction and statewide 

assessments by providing appropriate accommodations to all English learners.

• Consistent with the statutory requirement that states must make every effort to make native 

language assessments available for all languages present “to a significant extent” in a state, 

the regulations require that states define what it means for a language to be present “to a 

significant extent,” including that the most common language (besides English) is included in that 

definition.

• The regulations permit states to administer assessments in a Native American language to 

students enrolled in a Native American language school or program in any subject until the 

students are in high school, regardless of whether the students are identified as English learners.

Moving to high-quality, computer-adaptive assessments

• The law and regulations explain that states may develop computer-adaptive tests, which may 

provide a more precise estimate of a student’s ability with fewer questions than traditional tests.

• Even if computer-adaptive assessments include questions above or below a student’s grade level, 

such assessments must measure and report assessment results against grade-level academic 

standards to ensure all students are held to the same high standards.

Promoting Innovation and Next Generation Assessments: Title I, Part B

General Statutory Requirements

• The final regulations under Title I, part B support states in implementing the new flexibility in

ESSA to pilot innovative approaches to assessments.

• The Secretary has authority to grant flexibility to states to administer an innovative assessment in 

a subset of districts—instead of the statewide assessment—and to use those results for the 

purposes of accountability and reporting as the states scale the new systems to statewide use.

• Under Title I, part B, the Department may grant innovative assessment demonstration authority to 

up to seven states during the initial demonstration period of three years.

Application requirements

• The final regulations organize and clarify the statutory application requirements for 

demonstration authority, including: (1) evidence of consultation with technical experts and key 

stakeholders that will be affected by the new assessment system; (2) a demonstration of how the 

proposed innovative assessment system does, or will, meet statutory requirements for the 

alignment, quality, and fairness of the innovative assessment; (3) assurances related to standards 

and assessment requirements under the ESEA that remain in place under the authority; and (4) 

details on demographic and related information from participating school districts.
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• A state may develop an innovative assessment in all required grades and subjects, or a 

subset of them. The innovative assessment may, in any required grade or subject, include one or 

more types of innovative assessments and must produce an annual summative determination of 

each student’s mastery of grade-level content standards.

• To ensure states are able to assess all students using a new assessment, as required by the law, 

states must describe their approach to scaling the innovative assessment statewide, including 

criteria for selecting participating districts and benchmarks toward achieving implementation in 

demographically representative districts and schools over time.

Selection criteria

• Selection criteria in the final regulations, established from statutory requirements, explain how 

state applications will be evaluated by peer reviewers. States are required to describe their 

plan for critical components of their system and their implementation plan, including a 

rationale for the state’s particular innovative approach; a plan for scoring the assessments to 

ensure unbiased, valid, and reliable results; stakeholder support for their proposal; the availability 

of technology, expertise, and other essential resources and conditions.

• States must include a plan for how the State will sustain, or make progress, toward 

implementation in demographically diverse districts and schools throughout the demonstration 

period, with annual benchmarks for achieving a representative sample of participating schools 

that are, as a group, demographically similar to the state as a whole.

• States participating in the pilot must provide supports for educators, parents, and students, 

including training, professional development, and other strategies for familiarizing students, 

parents, and teachers with the new assessments.

Establishing comparability

• States are required to ensure their innovative assessments produce results comparable to 

the statewide assessments and must determine comparability between the statewide assessment 

and the innovative assessment annually. The final regulations provide states flexibility in how to 

establish comparability with four suggested methodologies or an equally rigorous, statedetermined methodology.

• States must also ensure that results of the innovative assessment, including the annual summative 

determination, are valid, reliable, and comparable for all students and for each subgroup of 

students and among participating schools and districts.

Transition to statewide use

• Consistent with the statute, the final regulations allow a state to request demonstration 

authority for up to five years, and to request an extension for up to two years if the state needs 

more time to scale its new assessment system statewide.

• Recognizing the differences between school districts in size and capacity, the final regulations 

allow districts to roll out the innovative assessment to their schools over multiple years, as 

long as the state ensures statewide implementation in all schools and districts by the end of its 

demonstration period.

• At the end of the pilot stage, the law and final regulations require states to submit their innovative 

assessments for assessment peer review, under Title I, part A, consistent with other statewide 

assessments.