“We spend too much time on testing,” is a lament we hear often among Idaho educators. Surely it is a national sentiment as well. Fordham’s SCHOOLED recently observed, “It’s true that too much testing remains a big problem—nationally and undoubtedly in Idaho. A new study from Education First provides an updated look at how many tests kids are taking, and it’s huge: up to 88 assessments before they even enter high school.”
For the past decade, Bluum—a Boise-based education nonprofit responsible for investing in Idaho’s significant charter school growth—has been part of this over-testing dilemma. Our intentions have been good. We believe in the power of data, especially timely data that can inform classroom decisions and guide instruction.
With generous financial support from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation Bluum has supported the use of NWEA’s MAP Growth assessment in reading and mathematics to track school and student performance across our partner schools. This is in addition to the state’s Idaho Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) assessments in English language arts and mathematics for grades 3–8 and 11, and the Idaho Reading Indicator (IRI) for kindergarten through third grade. Our school partners have also received significant professional development on how to use NWEA MAP data—issued three to four times per year—to improve classroom instruction. We’ve seen improvement across our schools because of their work with MAP data and the training brought to this.
Yet we have begun to question whether we have underutilized another assessment tool that has been right under our noses and is already paid for by the state of Idaho for all public schools: the ISAT.
We were first alerted to this possibility by ExcelinEd’s Christy Hovanetz. She shared that other states were doing a great deal of work with their state interim assessment data—work that sounded very similar to what we were doing with MAP data. When we began asking questions of our school leaders, many said they wondered the same thing: Why continue using MAP when the state already offers progress-monitoring assessments aligned with the ISAT?
Some of our schools already use ISAT interim tools and were rightly asking why they needed two assessments throughout the year when one might suffice.
“Because we always have!” is not a satisfactory answer for the people doing the critical work of educating Idaho’s next generation of citizens. At the same time, some of our leaders rely heavily on MAP—particularly for its streamlined reporting and instructional resources.
So we decided to investigate: Could the ISAT interim assessment tools provide a similar experience to MAP, and what resources would be required to make that possible? The prospect of reducing the time students spend taking tests—without sacrificing instructional value—seemed worth exploring.
We spoke with leaders of diverse charter school models—International Baccalaureate, college preparatory, classical education, etc. We spoke with charter and district teachers who had used MAP and ISAT interim tools. We consulted with officials from the Idaho Department of Education. We compared testing times and the reports available to teachers and building leaders. And we asked educators what they would change about both platforms.
We learned that the ISAT now offers a robust suite of progress-monitoring tools. In addition to the interim blocks—smaller, 30–40 minute testing segments that assess only the grade-level standards students have already been taught—teachers can administer two practice summative assessments. One is a full-length test, while the other removes the writing portion, which is the most time-consuming section. Each option helps educators understand how much grade-level content their students have mastered throughout the school year. These assessments also give students an opportunity to become familiar with the test format.
We learned that MAP’s strengths lie in its ability to quickly provide educators with a snapshot of how each student is performing relative to their peers, rather than solely against grade-level content, and how much progress they have made over time. The platform is easy to navigate and offers actionable next steps for teachers through integrations such as Khan Mappers and Read180. Educators also praised NWEA’s accompanying professional development, though we did see strong teacher support materials available for the ISAT, as well.
We also learned that many educators trust MAP and value the parent-facing Insights Reports. However, the ISAT platform has improved significantly in recent years. Common concerns about delayed results are now outdated. Item-level data are readily available and easy to access across all assessments in the suite. The platform also provides useful analyses, such as identifying the most-missed questions and the standards those questions assess, which makes grouping students for targeted remediation straightforward. To learn more see Feasibility Study: Assessment Analytics and Reporting.
Meanwhile, advancements in AI tools—when used responsibly—can provide additional analysis that further closes the gap between ISAT and MAP’s high-quality reporting and instructional alignment. We recently learned about a group in Illinois that has created a simple and inexpensive portal allowing districts to interact with reports generated from state data and download them as PDFs when needed.
Even if our network continues using MAP, the feedback we gathered has already proven valuable to our colleagues at the state level, who are currently asking vendors for further improvements to ISAT reporting and administration capabilities. Continued improvements to the ISAT could benefit every educator, parent, and student in Idaho.
Next, we will pressure-test how well we can use ISAT tools with volunteer schools during the 2026–27 school year. We will gather feedback on whether the ISAT—with some improvements based on what we’ve learned—can provide educators with the information they need. If successful, students will benefit from hours of reduced testing time. If not, we will know that, at least for now, MAP tools offer an irreplaceable benefit for our network.
