What kind of data will the CommonLit Free Reading Assessment give me?

If your district has chosen to purchase Assessment Series in CommonLit School Essentials PRO or School Essentials PRO Plus, you will not have access to the Free Reading Assessment. Instead, you’ll be able to collect baseline data through the first assessment in the Assessment Series. You’ll also have access to a Mid-Year and a Post-Assessment to help you track students’ reading growth throughout the reading year.

The CommonLit Free Reading Assessment provides teachers with data on their students' performance compared to one another as well as all other CommonLit students in the same grade who took the same assessment.

On the Analyze Data page, you will see your students' raw scores as well as a percentile score for how they did compared to other students in their grade who took the same grade-level assessment. You will also see a chart grouping them into Student Performance Groups based on percentile. The Student Performance Groups are split at the 10th, 30th, and 70th percentiles. So, for example, students who receive a Percentile ranking between 30-69 would fall into the "Medium Performers" group.

You will also see students' average percentages on specific standards groupings. For teachers with classes in grades 3-5, teachers will see data related to Common Core State Standards 1-4. For teachers with students in classes from grades 6-12, teachers will see data related to standards 1-6.

Please note, to ensure the integrity of the data, there is no item analysis provided for the assessment. At this time, the assessment does not provide a reading level, such as a Lexile level, as a quantitative measure. Writing performance is not assessed by the assessment. 

For information on how to access the Free Reading Assessment data, please see the FAQ: How do I view the Free Reading Assessment data?

Interested in getting affordable, rigorous benchmark assessments at your school or district to track student reading progress over the course of the year? Learn more about CommonLit's Assessments here.