ProgressGuide™ for Grades 3–8 ELA and Math
Connect High-Quality Assessment to What Students Are Learning, When They Learn It
Assessment should do more than predict performance. It should help educators improve it.
New Meridian’s ProgressGuide™ is a series of short, focused assessments, or testlets, that can be administered throughout the school year and aligned to a district’s local curriculum. Each testlet measures an individual standard or coherent group of standards and can be completed within a single class period.
ProgressGuide helps teachers look beyond whether students were successful with the lesson or materials they just encountered and determine whether that learning transfers to a rigorous measure of the underlying standard. When that evidence is available during the instructional sequence, it can inform tomorrow’s lesson, targeted reteaching, intervention, and broader decisions about student support. The goal is not simply to better predict the spring outcome. It is to give educators a better opportunity to change it.
Unlike traditional interim assessments that sample broadly across content regardless of when it was taught, ProgressGuide testlets can be sequenced and administered on demand according to the district’s scope and sequence. Near real-time results help educators respond while learning is still taking place, reducing unnecessary testing time and creating a more coherent assessment experience centered on instruction.
High-Quality Items That Prepare Students for State Testing
The quality of an assessment depends on the quality of its items.
ProgressGuide provides professionally developed, standards-aligned items designed to reflect the rigor, cognitive demand, and interactions students will encounter on state assessments. Students engage with technology-enhanced questions, multiselect responses, evidence-based reading and writing tasks, and multistep mathematics problems.
These high-quality assessment experiences give educators meaningful evidence of grade-level learning while familiarizing students with the critical thinking, problem-solving, and response formats expected on state tests. Rather than relying on disconnected test preparation, districts can build readiness through assessment experiences connected to everyday teaching and learning.
ProgressGuide assessment items are:
- Aligned to grade-level academic standards
- Designed to reflect appropriate rigor and cognitive demand
- Professionally developed and reviewed for quality and consistency
- Organized around specific standards and coherent instructional topics
- Ready to use, reducing the burden of creating and vetting local assessments
- Designed to produce actionable information, not simply another score
Timely Insight for Teachers. A Coherent View for District Leaders.
ProgressGuide translates assessment results into information educators can use.
Teachers and instructional teams can monitor developing mastery at the student and classroom levels, group students by learning needs, and plan differentiated instruction, reteaching, intervention, or extension. In math, reporting also identifies misconceptions that may be limiting students’ conceptual understanding or procedural fluency.
Results aggregate from individual students and classrooms to school- and district-level summaries. Administrators gain a coherent view of learning across the system, helping them identify common needs, plan professional learning, evaluate curriculum implementation, and direct specialist support and other resources where they can have the greatest impact.
With ProgressGuide, districts can:
- Assess what students have learned when they have learned it
- Connect assessment evidence directly to instructional decisions
- Gain standards-level insight into student learning before spring
- Support differentiated instruction and timely intervention
- Identify patterns across classrooms, schools, and the district
- Prepare students for the rigor and expectations of state testing
ProgressGuide ELA for Grades 3–8
Measure Reading as an Integrated Process
Strong readers construct meaning by drawing on an interconnected set of skills. They examine vocabulary, language, text structure, key ideas, evidence, and an author’s choices while connecting the text to their own knowledge through inference and reasoning.
ProgressGuide ELA reflects this integrated view of reading. Passage-based item sets use literary and informational texts, allowing students to demonstrate connected reading and language skills in meaningful contexts rather than practicing isolated skills through disconnected questions.
Reading testlets measure learning across five strands:
- Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
- Knowledge of Language
- Key Ideas and Details
- Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
- Craft and Structure
Reports show students’ developing proficiency within each strand as well as their mastery of the specific standards within it. Educators gain actionable detail while supporting coherent comprehension instruction centered on meaningful texts.
ELA reading testlets follow a recommended sequence across the school year. Students encounter increasingly complex texts and progressively sophisticated comprehension tasks, supporting their development while preparing them for the demands of grade-level and state assessment.
ProgressGuide Math for Grades 3–8
Assess Math When It Is Taught
Mathematics instruction is organized around coherent progressions of related concepts and skills, but curriculum programs differ in the order and timing in which those concepts are taught. ProgressGuide Math is designed to accommodate that variation.
Focused testlets measure individual standards or coherent groups of standards, such as comparing and finding equivalent fractions or writing and interpreting numerical expressions. Districts can sequence and administer testlets according to their local curriculum rather than reorganizing instruction around a predetermined assessment calendar.
This flexible design allows teachers to check learning soon after instruction, identify where understanding is secure, and respond quickly when students need additional support.
Go Beyond “Right and Wrong”
A correct or incorrect answer does not always reveal how a student is thinking.
ProgressGuide Math items and distractor options are purposefully designed to uncover misconceptions that may be inhibiting conceptual understanding or procedural fluency. Reports show both standards mastery and identified misconceptions, helping teachers understand not only whether students are struggling, but also why.
Educators can use these insights to plan targeted reteaching, address common errors, strengthen mathematical understanding, and provide more precise support.
Make Assessment More Useful
ProgressGuide gives districts a more connected approach to assessment through high-quality items, flexible administration, timely reporting, and evidence tied directly to what students are learning.
The result is assessment that helps educators respond today while preparing students for the expectations they will face on state testing.
Discover how ProgressGuide can strengthen the connection among curriculum, instruction, and assessment in your district.
FAQ
ProgressGuide is New Meridian's interim assessment solution designed to provide educators with timely evidence of student learning throughout the school year. Districts use ProgressGuide to monitor progress toward grade-level standards, identify learning gaps, and make instructional decisions that support student growth.
ProgressGuide goes beyond measuring achievement at a single point in time. The assessment system is designed to provide actionable information about student learning progress, helping educators understand not only whether students are meeting expectations, but also what they are ready to learn next.
ProgressGuide provides timely reporting that allows educators, school leaders, and district administrators to review student performance shortly after testing. The reports highlight strengths, learning needs, and trends that can inform instruction, intervention planning, and resource allocation.
Yes. ProgressGuide is designed to align with state academic standards and can support district efforts to strengthen instruction, monitor implementation of curriculum, evaluate interventions, and track student growth across schools and grade levels.
ProgressGuide helps educators identify students who may need additional support, monitor the impact of interventions, and track progress over time. The data can be used alongside other local measures to support MTSS, intervention planning, and student success initiatives.