Assessment & Evaluation

Login to the PLTW Assessment System

2011-2012 Spring Testing Overview Final (PDF) 

Recent Communications to PLTW Schools

Purpose and Benefits

Through a collaboration with Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), PLTW offers summative End of Course assessments for student achievement determination in PLTW courses. Assessment data is available to teachers immediately following student testing, and is aggregated into FERPA-compliant, non-identifiable accountability reports for state departments of education. Students are also able to provide assessment data to post-secondary institutions for college credit determination.

Type of Assessments

PLTW offers End of Course assessments for the following courses:

Pathway To Engineering
Aerospace Engineering (AE), Biotechnical Engineering (BE), Civil Engineering & Architecture (CEA), Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), Digital Electronics (DE), Introduction to Engineering Design (IED) and Principals of Engineering (POE)

Biomedical Sciences
Human Body Systems (HBS), Medical Interventions (MI) and Principles of the Biomedical Sciences (PBS)

PLTW End-of-Course Assessments

  • End-of-course assessments are administered at the conclusion of each PLTW course and measure student understanding of PLTW course content.
  • Part A assessments are online and consist of 40 multiple choice questions on course material and are required as outlined in the school’s PLTW STEM Agreement.
  • Part C is optional (in most states) and are mostly paper/pencil-administered assessments that are graded by the teacher and entered into the assessment system.
  • Three courses (AE, CEA and POE) have online, computer-graded Part A and Part C assessments. BE, CIM, DE, IED and PBS have paper/pencil, teacher-graded Part C assessments. HBS and MI do not have Part C assessments.
  • Assessment administration guidelines, as well as other related documents, can be found on the PLTW Extranet under "Materials."

End of Course Assessment Schedule

Fall/Winter End of Course Assessments
November 7, 2011 - March 16, 2012
Spring End of Course Assessments
April 23 - June 19, 2012

All assessments must be taken during either the Fall/Winter or Spring testing cycles. Students are unable to take the assessments outside of these two testing windows. All teacher-graded Part C data must be entered into the system prior to June 19, 2012.

Teacher Training for the PLTW Assessment System

This training video will provide teachers an overview on how to log in and navigate the 2011-12 PLTW Assessment System, both as a teacher and as a student.

PLTW Assessment System Training Video- Teacher

Frequently Asked Questions

Visit our Assessment FAQs for answers to the most commonly asked questions relating to PLTW’s Assessment System (including how to navigate the system) and the resulting data.

The deadline to access 2010-11 reports through the Assessment System has passed. Please contact us for more information regarding this data and for reports from the 2010-11 school year.

PLTW has a dedicated assessment team to support our Assessment and Evaluation Program. Team members include:

  • Chief Program Officer, Anne Jones, Ed.D.
  • Director of Assessment, Jason Taylor
  • Project Manager, Kristin Donlon

PLTW’s School Support Team is available to assist with questions and troubleshooting. For Technical Support, please email Technical Support or call 877-335-PLTW (7589) and select option 1. For all other assessment-related questions, please email Assessment and Evaluation or call 877-335-PLTW (7589) and select option 2.