Content Specifications for the Summative Assessment of the ...

What sufficient evidence looks like for the Overall ELA/Literacy Claim
The evidence to support student progress toward or attainment of college and career readiness will be
provided by student performance on the items and tasks for the four domain claims. This claim
represents a weighted composite of all evidence gathered across the four domain-specific claims. That
is, the contributions to the overall claim provided by each of the domain-specific claims will be need to
be weighted through an analytic and judgmental process. It would be unreasonable to make the a priori
assumption that the contribution to a claim about overall college/career readiness of, for example,
reading is the same as the contribution of each of the remaining domains. Determining the weighting of
the domain-specific claims is a decision that will need to be made based on the psychometric
characteristics of the evidence from the four domain claims and on empirical data and policy direction
provided by member states. This work will need to be carried out during the standard setting phase of
the project.
Proposed Reporting Categories for the Overall ELA/Literacy Claim
There will be a Total English language arts/Literacy score, which will be a weighted composite
based on the student’s performance across the four domain-specific claims. The Total
ELA/Literacy scores will be vertically scaled across grades.
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