Good assessment share five key features:

1. Clear targets:
   • Provide clear descriptions of specific achievement expectations to be assessed.

   • Measure one or more of the four achievement expectations.

   • Assure that evaluators understand and remain aware of what they are assessing.

2. Focused purpose:
   • Clarify the intended uses of the assessment results.

   • Specify whose information needs the assessment will meet: teachers, curriculum developers, and policymakers.

3. Proper method:
   • Use an assessment method that is suited to the assessment goals (such as essays, direct communication, selected response or extended investigations).

4. Sound sampling:
   • Provide a representative sample of all the questions that can be asked.

   • Produce results of maximum quality at minimum cost in time and effort.

   • Yield confident inferences about how the respondent would have done given all possible exercises.

5. Accurate assessment free of bias and distortion:
   • Present sources of inference and error that may have affected the development and implementation of the assessment.

   • Anticipate sources of bias that can create ambiguity in results.