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How Georgia's Assessments Work


​​The State of Georgia is a leader in producing high-quality, balanced assessment systems that support improved teaching and learning for all of our students. The Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) creates and administers assessments that are designed to support a variety of formative and summative educational purposes, such as:

  • providing teachers with important insights about learning,
  • informing parents about individual students' levels of achievement, and
  • informing policymakers about achievement outcomes for groups of students.

On this site, GaDOE provides information about the processes and procedures that are used to develop, balance, and maintain Georgia's assessment systems.​


Interpretation and Use

​​In a balanced educational system, assessments are essential for understanding what students have learned and supporting continued learning. Georgia's assessments are designed to measure and report what students know and can do in a valid, reliable, and fair way. Results for individual students provide parents and teachers with information to support curricular decisions while summarized achievement results for schools, districts, and the state allow stakeholders to evaluate and improve current education practice for all students.

​​​​​​​​​​Results from Georgia's assessments are used in several ways, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Formative assessment results (e.g., Keenville, DRC BEACON, and GKIDS 2.0) are used to directly inform immediate classroom instructional choices, and are not used for high-stakes accountability. These assessments quickly provide individual and aggregated performance reports with detailed information on strengths demonstrated by a student or student group, and areas where additional learning is needed.

Georgia's statewide summative assessments (e.g., Georgia Milestones, GAA 2.0, ACCESS for ELLs, and NAEP) also provide a variety of reported results for different purposes.  Student-level results are used by teachers, students, and parents as one piece of information to inform instructional decisions about students. School and district-level results are used by local leaders to evaluate and improve instructional programs and curricular initiatives. School, district, and state-level results are used to support CCRPI, Georgia's accountability system. The results  for Georgia Milestones also support Georgia's state law for promotion in grades 3, 5, and 8, grading in high school courses, and other initiatives to improve instructional practice (e.g., TKES and LKES).

Formative and summative results are provided to students, teachers, parents, educational leaders, and other stakeholders as quickly as possible, while still ensuring the technical quality of all reported outcomes. For example, with a formative assessment like Keenville, which uses an innovative game-based delivery model, student and group results are provided on-demand to teachers through an interactive dashboard which allows teachers to see how students performed on each question, and the standards associated with each. For summative assessments, results are provided around the close of the state testing window​, as there are more complex scoring processes, including handscoring of writing items and psychometric evaluation steps.

For more information about interpreting the various reports provided by each assessment, please view the Score Interpretation Guides.

 Spotlight On: Interactive Reporting

Interactive reporting dashboards provide Georgia educators with more options and flexibility than traditional reporting formats alone, such as PDFs and file extracts. Georgia Milestones, Keenville, and GKIDS 2.0 all provide unique and dynamic interactive reporting options so teachers and educators can filter, sort, drill down, and export achievement information to best meet their instructional needs. Each reporting platform is uniquely designed to provide meaningful access to each assessment program's achievement results.

  • Keenville game-based achievement results are presented in dynamic charts and graphs which allow educators to click in and drill down to see details by student and by standard (click here ​for more information on Keenville reporting resources).
  • GKIDS 2.0 learning progression and Readiness Check achievement is available in several dynamic report and analytic views within a comprehensive platform where teachers can save notes and detailed achievement information as their students progress throughout the year (click here for more information on GKIDS 2.0 reporting resources).
  • Georgia Milestones new interactive reporting platform provides a modern, intuitive interface for educators to review achievement by class, content area, and domain, with customizable report views to best fit their needs (click here for more information on Georgia Milestones interactive reporting resources). ​

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Questions? Comments?

Contact the Georgia Department of Education toll-free at 1-800-634-4106, or visit their website at testing.gadoe.org