This article outlines best practices for planning, creating, and administering NoRedInk Skills Benchmarks. Following these steps will help ensure your Benchmarks run smoothly and produce meaningful data to guide instruction across your district.

Plan Your Benchmark

Create your benchmark

When setting up a Skills Benchmark, you can choose either a pre-made, standards-aligned Benchmark or a custom-made Benchmark created from topics in the Assignment Library.

We recommend using pre-made Benchmarks whenever possible. These curated topic sets are designed specifically for Benchmark use and are aligned to priority state standards.
If creating a custom Benchmark, select 5–8 topics and aim for 20–25 total questions. This keeps the assessment manageable for teachers to assign within one class period and ensures the data is actionable without being overwhelming.

Plan your timeline

Allow enough time for administration. We recommend 2 weeks.

Allow enough time between Benchmarks in a series. We recommend a 3-month gap, with a minimum of 4 weeks between administrations.

💡 Customize the term "Benchmark" to match the preferred language used on campus. These setting can be applied to specific schools, and the terminology will appear consistently throughout the teacher interface. You can customize the term through your Admin Tools!

Prepare Teachers and Students

Before your teachers administer the Skills Benchmark, clarify directions and expectations. Send an email to all participating teachers ahead of time that includes:

Your educational objectives for the benchmark
The administration window and deadlines
Expectations for student preparation and participation

To help reduce anxiety for students, encourage teachers to:

Have students log in to NoRedInk before benchmark day
Familiarize students with NoRedInk
Explain the purpose of the benchmark assessment

Monitor Administration Progress

Once the administration window has begun, you can track participation status via the Skills Benchmarks landing page. We recommend that at least 50% of the eligible classes, those tagged with the target grade level, and 50% of the assigned students complete the benchmark cycle, meaning the assignment has been created, submitted and graded.

Administration status for a Benchmark.png

To keep administration on track, consider reaching out to teachers who haven’t yet assigned the Skills Benchmark to encourage participation.

Access Benchmark Results

After the administration window closes, you'll be able to access the results by selecting View results next to the Benchmark. This information will help inform instructional decisions and identify areas for targeted support.

Refer to this article for best practices for guiding teachers in interpreting data, identifying strengths and areas for growth, and assigning targeted NoRedInk activities to help students improve before the next Benchmark.

Additional Resources

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Skills Benchmark Best Practices