New Meridian Launches ProgressGuide™, A New Diagnostic Assessment that Informs Instruction and Provides a Through-Year Growth Measure 

AUSTIN (Dec. 5, 2023)—New Meridian, a nonprofit dedicated to developing high-quality assessment solutions for K-12 schools, is proud to announce ProgressGuide™ Assessment, a next-generation through-year assessment system for school districts that provides instructionally useful data aligned to the taught curriculum and a through-year growth measure.  

ProgressGuide uses a set of short mini-assessments or “testlets” that are flexibly aligned to classroom instruction so teachers can better address the learning needs of each student. The testlets align directly with the most popular high-quality curriculum programs or to a district’s local scope and sequence. Directly assessing what is taught when it’s taught provides more timely, actionable information to teachers and students to support improved learning outcomes. It also provides a fairer, more accurate measure of student growth resulting directly from classroom instruction. 

Unlike interim assessments, which simply measure growth over time, ProgressGuide provides detailed information about how students are mastering concepts and skills as they are introduced, developed, and applied through the curriculum. This helps prevent the common practice of using interim test results for test prep, drilling students on discrete, decontextualized skills. Instead, ProgressGuide reinforces a coherent alignment between curriculum, instruction, and assessment, which research shows is critical to accelerating student learning and growth.  

ProgressGuide then uses sophisticated scoring models to transform the formative instructional data into a projected summative score, enabling administrators to monitor growth and direct instructional resources. 

“School districts need better assessment tools that accelerate learning by reinforcing a coherent curriculum plan,” said Arthur VanderVeen, founder and CEO of New Meridian. “ProgressGuide is that tool. Through short, modular checks for understanding aligned to the curriculum, ProgressGuide helps teachers monitor and manage student progress through the year, adjusting pace and personalizing instruction to the needs of their students. We believe that this approach—curriculum-aligned, through-year testing—is the future of assessment.” 

ProgressGuide follows the release of New Meridian’s MasteryGuide™ Assessment, a through-year assessment system for states that enables districts to configure the state accountability assessment to align to their local scope and sequence. MasteryGuide solves the problem states face when adopting a through-year assessment of how to sequence the assessment throughout the year without imposing a single statewide scope and sequence on local school districts. Districts maintain their local curriculum and “build” their state test to match. This both honors local control and avoids simply testing the same end-of-year blueprint three times a year as most current through-year assessments do. MasteryGuide Assessment has been piloted with tens of thousands of students in multiple states. 

ProgressGuide Assessment is available for districts in grades 3-8 math and English Language Arts for the 2024-2025 school year.  

For questions about New Meridian’s ProgressGuide or MasteryGuide Assessments, please contact info@newmeridiancorp.org.