Introducing High-Quality Instructional Assessments (HQIA): Your New Instructional Ally

For too long, teachers have been asked to teach one thing but measure another. Assessments have been stuck in a cycle of reporting scores and labeling students instead of driving learning. That mismatch has created frustration for educators, wasted instructional time, and left curriculum investments underperforming.

High-Quality Instructional Assessments (HQIA) change that. They’re not just “better tests.” They’re an entirely new class of assessments designed to fuel instruction in real time, closing the gap between what teachers are asked to teach and what they’re given to measure.

Why Traditional Assessments Fall Short

Traditional testing gives teachers a static score—data that’s too broad, too late, and too disconnected from what’s happening in the classroom. Even the best curriculum can falter if teachers can’t see how it’s supporting student learning in the moment.

That’s why teachers often improvise, not because they reject their curriculum, but because they’re unsupported with the right kind of assessment data. 

We’ve written extensively about how you don’t need to give more tests, you have to give the right tests, and illustrated this coherence crisis. The cracks in the education system continue to widen, and it’s past time we provide an assessment suite that works in tandem with your curriculum and professional development, measuring mastery and misconceptions. 

What Makes HQIA Different

HQIA are built to work hand-in-hand with high-quality instructional materials. Instead of asking teachers to wait weeks or months for results, HQIA deliver clear, actionable insights in minutes.

• Real-time clarity: Teachers uncover not just what a student got wrong, but why, pinpointing the exact logic or misconception, and have a clear guide to the next instructional moves they should take to help each student.
• Instructional alignment: HQIA guide teachers to adjust instruction with the curriculum they already have, maintaining consistent, high-quality content and pedagogy for students.
• A system of instructional actions: Educators have access to aggregated insights to generate instructional leadership and actions at the classroom, school, and system level. 

With high-quality instructional assessments, everyone from the district to the teacher can look back and forward to understand how to best support students.

Why Other Assessments Aren’t HQIA

Not every assessment qualifies as a High-Quality Instructional Assessment (HQIA). In fact, most assessments used in schools today become misaligned and miss the mark:

• Standardized state tests: These measure overall performance but deliver results months later, far too late to inform day-to-day instruction. Educators need more than a summative score.
• Benchmark tests that only provide a score or color: These give scores at set points in the year, but the data is too broad to guide instructional adjustments in the moment. Teachers deserve more information to inform instruction.
• Teacher-created quizzes and unit/curriculum-embedded tests: These can check recall of the materials but often lack the rigor, alignment, or detail to pinpoint misconceptions. Educators need a way to understand if a student understands the learning concept, like fractions, and not only how the curriculum describes it. 

The issue isn’t that these tools are “bad tests.” It’s that they weren’t designed to guide teaching. They generate scores, not insights, leaving teachers with limited clarity and little support for making instructional adjustments in real time. 

In a coherent assessment system, these tests may have their place. Auditing your assessments with intention and purpose helps alleviate the pressure of too many assessments, but without an assessment that serves as the hub in your assessment wheel and a connection to your HQIM, these assessments may still feel disjointed.

That’s where HQIA stand apart. They are intentionally designed to connect high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) with the realities of student learning, so teachers don’t just see how many students missed a concept, but why they missed it and what to do next.

A Day in the Life with HQIA

Picture this: Ms. Ramirez is teaching a unit on fractions. In the past, she may have waited weeks for benchmark data or tried to piece together insights from quizzes that didn’t quite match the curriculum. By the time she knew where students struggled, the class had already moved on.

With HQIA, it looks different. She can give a short, aligned HQIA during class. Within minutes, the results show her that half her students aren’t struggling with fractions in general, they’re misapplying rules for whole numbers. That single insight changes everything.

Instead of reteaching the entire unit, Ms. Ramirez pivots her lesson the very next day. She uses her existing curriculum to target the misconception directly. Students make progress faster, and Ms. Ramirez reclaims hours of instructional time she would have lost reteaching content unnecessarily.

And it’s not just Ms. Ramirez that benefits.

• Ms. Ramirez’s prinicpal and math instructional coach can see the same data across the grade to see that maybe 30% of students have the same understanding, and they plan the next professional development or PLC cycle to include a focus on whole numbers and fractions. They can collaborate with Ms. Ramirez on instructional shifts to make the next time fractions come up in the curriculum.
• The Director of Math across the district can see the same data across schools in the district and potentially discover that 50% of students struggle in the same way with data. They can then make more informed decisions about current goals and plans to support teachers and school-level leaders with this learning concept. 

This is the power of HQIA: clarity in the moment, alignment with the curriculum, and real-time support that keeps instruction moving forward.

From Cluttered Data to Meaningful Understanding

With HQIA, teachers finally get data that matters. Instead of drowning in numbers that don’t impact practice, educators gain clarity into student thinking.

This shift transforms assessment into a teacher’s most powerful instructional ally:

• Assessments that guide teaching before and after instruction
• Data that drives targeted support across all tiers of students.
• Insights that connect the rigor, scope, and sequence of the curriculum directly to student learning.

The result? A new level of coherence between teaching, assessment, and learning.

Proof That It Works

ANet-coached schools using HQIM paired with aligned assessments outperformed their peers—driving 7% higher gains in Math and 2% in English Language Arts. The model works because it strengthens the connection between instruction and student outcomes.

Protect Your Curriculum Investment

Your curriculum is one of the largest investments you make in student learning. But without aligned, high-quality instructional assessments, it can’t deliver its full potential.

HQIA are the missing link—ensuring your investment in curriculum translates into real student growth.

Ready to Learn More?

HQIA represent a definitive shift to testing as an instructional improvement tool. They’re a game-changer for schools that want clarity, coherence, and real impact.

Sign up for first access to our white paper to see how HQIA can transform teaching and learning in your schools.