Five Reasons Benchmark Evaluations Help Teachers and Administrators Focus on What Matters Most

If you’re wondering how to increase your student outcomes without increasing teacher workload, you need to check out our Benchmark Evaluation Service! The only of its kind, our Benchmark Evaluation Service provides benchmark writing data through our professionally-trained human scorers up to four times per year. Don’t take our word for it, hear what teachers and administrators have to say. 

1. Teachers and students receive high-quality feedback without increasing workload 

• “Giving the benchmark assessment was very simple in all aspects. Students felt comfortable with the test and were able to do their best…The system remains an excellent basis for teaching reading comprehension and writing skills. I plan on continuing to use the benchmark for my classes every year.” Michael Armstrong, Teacher, Hartwell School, Cincinnati Public Schools.
• “Thank you! It is helpful to have an outside grader. My students also appreciate the feedback from someone other than me.” Christina Cupp, Teacher, Withrow University High School, Cincinnati Public Schools.

We know how much teachers are asked to do, so we designed our Benchmark Evaluation Service to require as little lifting as possible from teachers. Once assessment windows are set, everything is automated on our end, including assigning the benchmark! Teachers simply set the stage for their testing environment, unlock the assessment, then get back to their busy schedules while our expert scorers do the grading.

2. BES data provides actionable insight for all school stakeholders

• “Our teachers look closely at the instructional insights and next steps to drive their instruction as well as conference with the students.” School Administrator, Urban Georgia District.
• We use the data to “[h]elp guide ELA instruction. Teachers used the data for student and parent conferences. Students critique other students writing to help build their own. Student's essay are posted on the board without student's names the students then list grows and glows about the essay.” Emily Felton, School Administrator, Arbor Station Elementary School, Douglas County School System.

From our Reporting Dashboards, all teachers and administrators receive access to  multiple dashboards containing various graphs and tables aggregating different metrics essential to progress monitoring and instructional planning. Our dashboards provide teams with breakdowns of all the information necessary to determine where students are and what instructional next steps the team can make to achieve the most growth.

3. BES data and feedback improves student performance

• “Scores and feedback were very helpful for both teachers and students. We were able to utilize the feedback in coaching sessions with students to help drive further development in specific areas…The overall experience with ThinkCERCA has been great. We have experienced gains in both student performance and instructional practice using this tool. We have especially appreciated ThinkCERCA's approach of making the process of teaching reading and writing to students easier for teachers.” Jacob Bendixon, School Administrator, Cortney Junior High School, Clark County School District.

ThinkCERCA’s products are proven to help students achieve an extra year’s worth of growth in one school year and  four times more growth than the next highest performing product in a study by LEAP Innovations. When combining our products with our Benchmark Evaluation Service, teachers and administrators are able to tailor their goals based on their current students’ actual needs, and many cite seeing even more growth when implementing instructional shifts based on the BES data. 

4.  Teacher teams and departments unify practices

• “Meeting with [our school success manager] profoundly assists my processing of the benchmark itself as well as how to administer it and aggregate the results in a way that can inform my instruction.” Jana Pajic, Teacher, Withrow University High School, Cincinnati Public Schools.

Our Benchmark Evaluation Service includes a tailored Results and Recommendations session for administrators after each benchmark administration, and this session can also be delivered to teacher teams when possible. Attendees of these sessions are guided through a detailed analysis of their benchmark data, exploring guidance and resources for utilizing the data with students. We work together with school teams to create unified practices and routines for improvement. 

5.  Our product and services are built around real user feedback

• “ThinkCERCA gets easier to use each year. I appreciate the adjustments and new rollouts because it's clear you're taking teacher feedback into account when you're making ThinkCERCA more user-friendly.” - Paul Dalsky, Teacher, Western Hills University High School, Cincinnati Public Schools .

We collect feedback twice a year from our BES customers and use that to inform  improvements. Feedback surveys and user experience testing sessions are also released in our app regularly to ensure the platform and all of our products meet the needs of all your stakeholders.