What is a Common Assessment?

In Formative, a common assessment is any activity administered by multiple teachers across classrooms to measure student learning consistently. While any shared assessment can serve this purpose, enabling the Common Assessment tag gives district and school admins added control over how the assessment is delivered, accessed, and reported.

Why Use the Common Assessment Tag?

Tagging an assessment as a common assessment unlocks a set of powerful administrative features that ensure consistency and integrity across classrooms:

Prevents teachers from duplicating or modifying the assessment
Centralizes performance data for consistent reporting across classes, grades, and schools
Allows global assignment settings to be locked in, ensuring every student receives the assessment under the same conditions
Supports features like the LockDown Browser and detailed tagging for better alignment with district testing initiatives

1. Creating and Preparing a Common Assessment

Whether you’re starting from scratch or using an existing formative, the process begins by tagging the activity as a common assessment and configuring its settings appropriately.

Option A: Create New

Log into Formative
Click +Create > Common Assessment
This starts a new formative with the tag applied and allows for admin-level configuration from the beginning

Option B: Convert Existing

Open the existing formative
Click the three-dot menu > Common Assessment Settings
Toggle on Tag as Common Assessment > Save

Adding Collaborators

To streamline content creation and management, you can add colleagues as Editors on an assessment or folder:

Open the assessment or folder
Click the three-dot menu > Share
Enter the user’s email address > Click Add

Adding collaborators at the folder level gives them edit access to all assessments within that folder—ideal for curriculum teams working across subjects or grade levels.

Configure Common Assessment Settings

Once tagged, configure the assessment’s global settings to lock in the intended student experience. These settings will override teacher-level options unless set to “User Preference.”

Assessment Window: Define start and end dates that control when students can access the assessment
Display Settings: Choose options like question randomization or one item per page to control pacing
Grading Behavior:
- Total Attempts: Limit students to a single attempt, or allow teacher override
- After Submission Visibility:
  - Make Hidden: Removes the assessment from student view
  - Keep Visible (No Edits Allowed): Shows assessment with locked answers
  - Allow Edits: Enables revisions after submission (ideal for practice)
- Return Scores:
  - Instantly, After Submission, When Closed, or Don’t Show
- Return Correct Answers:
  - After Submission, When Closed, or Don’t Show
LockDown Browser: Enable to force launch assignments in a Secure Browser
Score Thresholds: Set performance bands or benchmarks if using for standardized reporting
Tagging: Complete metadata like academic year, subject, grade, and type of assessment to improve filtering and reporting

Once complete, add your content (questions, embedded materials, etc.) and move on to planning distribution.

2. Organizing Before Distribution

Validate Org and Team Structure

Visit the Org Management tab
Confirm your rostered orgs reflect your district’s school and departmental structure
Note: Reporting is tied to the orgs that classes are associated with. For bulk-rostered schools & districts this means reporting will default to the bulk-rostered orgs. Manually created orgs (e.g., PLCs) are useful for sharing but will not be reflected in reporting unless the class-org association is adjusted manually to reflect these manually created orgs as well.
For any manually created org, assign at least one Org Manager to manage users

Set Naming Conventions

A consistent naming system reduces confusion and prevents assignment errors. Include key details like year, subject, grade, and term in both assessments and folders.

Recommended Format:

Apply the same approach to folder names so that assessments are easy to locate and track.

3. Distributing the Common Assessment

Once your assessments are tagged, configured, and organized, you’re ready to share them with teachers. There are multiple methods to distribute Common Assessments and define which individual teachers or teams will have access to them.

Option A: Granting Broad Access

Share a Folder (multiple assessments)

Move the assessments into a folder
Click the three-dot menu next to the folder > Share > Add Orgs
Select the appropriate org(s) and grant Assign access

Why this works: This method makes all assessments in the folder available to all users in the org. Combined with consistent naming, it ensures that teachers can quickly locate the correct assessments without clutter or confusion.

Option B: Granting Targeted Access

Share Individual Assessment via Link

Open the assessment > click the three-dot menu > Share > Copy Link
Share via your district’s normal channels (e.g., Google Doc, calendar, or email)

Why this works: Sharing links allows you to control exactly when teachers gain access. It’s ideal if assessments shouldn’t be visible until a certain date or if you’re sharing with a specific group.

Limitations: Teachers will not see the folder structure and the assessment will appear at the top level of their Activities list.

4. Granting Data Access

While staff members with an 'Admin' role can view collective data gathered from all teachers and classes associated with the org they are administrating (including all the descendant departments within this org), staff members with a 'Teacher' role can normally view only their own classes' data.

Teachers within a specific org can be granted special access to view the collective data on an individual Common Assessment, from the Common Assessment Settings menu:

Open the assessment > click the three-dot menu > Common Assessment Settings
Add Orgs under the field 'Data Access'

Pro-tip: If you want teachers within a team to view each others' data, but not see data collected from teachers in other teams - don't set the team with Data Access. Instead, adjust the teachers' role to 'Admin' from your Team Management page.

Best Practices for Admins

Use folders and naming standards to maintain clarity at scale
Add collaborators for easier content creation and version control
Encourage use of dashboard filters (“Owned by Me”, “Shared with Me”) for better teacher UX
Keep assessments up to date by reviewing content each term or semester
Communicate clearly with teachers around timelines, access steps, and expectations for test delivery