Essential Skills and the Oregon Diploma



Purpose of the Toolkit
This Assessment of Essential Skills Toolkit is a process and resource guide to aid districts in designing, implementing and sustaining an assessment system for the Essential Skills that meets the requirements for an Oregon diploma. 

The guidance included in the Toolkit will evolve over time and is not intended as a list of requirements that districts must follow in order to comply with ORS or OAR requirements.  This Toolkit does not replace ORS or OAR requirements, nor is it intended to describe everything a district needs to do to support student success. The Toolkit is designed to offer two important categories of support to schools:
    • a set of tools which districts/schools may choose to use
    • up-to-date information and resources

How to Use the Toolkit

The Assessment of Essential Skills Toolkit is organized in three functional categories, including Planning, Implementing, and Sustaining. You’ll be able to access any of the sections and applicable steps/resources at any time as you develop your district/school strategic assessment plan. In the Planning section, steps 1-10 outline a process for developing your plan for assessing the Essential Skills. The Implementation section is currently being developed, but does provide some initial resources to help districts/schools implement their assessment of Essential Skills plans. The Sustaining section will be developed in the near future.

As you work through the Toolkit, you may print tools and resources or download a Microsoft Word version by selecting the item from the Checklist section at the bottom of each page. You can navigate through the steps by using either the Toolkit Process in the navigation above or by selecting the next step, tool, or resource at the bottom of each page.  Some Tools and Resources are presented as "pop-ups." You may need to enable "pop-ups" on your computer to access them.

On-going Effort

This is a work in progress that brings together a tremendous amount of knowledge and resources from ODE, ESDs, COSA, OSBA, school districts and others in a single website. Oregon educators are encouraged to continue to contribute best practices as we strive to improve the Toolkit.