States turn to predictive tech to improve student performance
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Student test scores across the U.S. are lower than they have been in decades. Schools that leverage tools to benchmark and predict their performance can help teachers better address learning gaps, experts say.
Student performance across the U.S. has steadily declined in recent years, with high school students achieving the lowest average reading and math scores since 1992 and 2005, respectively, according to a recent report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. One way the education sector can combat students’ falling grades is through tech aimed at identifying and predicting what their learning needs are.
Nearly 30 states are planning to adopt and deploy one such solution from education technology company Instructure for the 2026-2027 school year. The solution, called Mastery Prediction Assessment, aims to help teachers and education leaders more closely monitor and address students’ progress throughout the year rather than wait for end-of-year testing results.
“I think all educators understand that the more information we know about what our students know before we get to the end of the courses is best,” said Tracy Weeks, lead of education policy and strategy at Instructure and former chief academic officer for North Carolina.
In fact, the U.S. market for predictive tech in education is projected to reach $9.3 billion by 2034.
Using the assessment tool, teachers can administer benchmark assessments throughout the year. It also helps project a student’s performance at the end of the year based on previous data. Students’ results offer educators a clearer view into individuals’ learning gaps so they can implement more targeted interventions to ensure students remain on track with state standards, Weeks explained.
The assessment tool is designed to align with each state's summative assessments, and artificial intelligence is leveraged to help generate assessment questions that undergo extensive validity and reliability before they’re approved for use, she said.
More broadly, school district leaders can leverage data insights from the assessment tools to monitor schools’ performances and, for example, identify and address low-performing facilities, she said. Such results can signal to education leaders that “we either need to invest in additional [learning] materials or maybe we need to invest in some additional training for our educators,” Weeks said.
Another major reason why states are increasingly turning to services like predictive assessment technology “is that nobody loves the testing that happens at the end of the year,” said Joseph South, chief innovation officer at the International Society for Technology in Education and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. “We literally shut down schools completely, all learning stops and classrooms turn into test labs for days and sometimes weeks.”
Halting normal school operations means standardized testing can be costly for states already grappling with competing priorities amid shrinking budgets. Washington state, for instance, reported spending more than $27 million on student assessments for the 2023-2024 school year.
With more efficient predictive assessment tools, South said school systems could increase the number of students who pass end-of-year testing, bringing statewide and national test scores back to higher levels. And, in theory, more effective educational interventions throughout the school year could help move states to a new model where, for example, fewer students need to undergo testing in the first place, helping save limited resources and funding to do so, he explained.
Education leaders and experts have “been hoping for a future like that for a long time, and it’s exciting to see organizations are trying to do that,” South said.
But before states rush to explore tech solutions to achieve that goal, South underscored the critical step of ensuring any tool they implement is properly vetted for transparency and accuracy. Teachers and school officials have a responsibility to set students up for success later in life, such as pursuing higher education and quality jobs, so the technology they leverage in K-12 schools is high stakes.
But a tech solution that enables education leaders to access more accurate and precise information about students’ performance “is a superpower for them,” South said. “Teachers know how to intervene, but they don’t always know exactly what every student needs without some help. I think that this kind of technology can be incredibly impactful, if it’s done right.”