Assessments

We begin our relationship with our students by asking both the child and parent to articulate his or her strengths and interests. Through these as well as emergent interests, we are able to foster a love of learning by allowing a student to explore as well as provide our teachers with the knowledge of how to align content with interests.

Our primary evaluation is our Asset-Based Portfolio process (i.e., Asset Based Learning Evaluation TM). Through a portfolio, we examine student work and evaluate how the product illustrates knowledge in six domains: Literacy & Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Expressive Art, Social Studies, as well as Personal and Social Development. In addition to aligning their work to the North Carolina Course of Study (Key Assets), the portfolio allows the student to reflect and articulate what they have learned.

In addition to participating in the North Carolina End of Grade assessments, New Dimensions School participates annually in evaluating individual student progress through the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MET). The MET is a norm-referenced assessment and measures student performance against that of other students taking the same test. Through this assessment, a child receives a percentile ranking illustrating what percentage of students they performed better than on the same test.