Starting January 9th, all students in the Washington School District will be taking the winter benchmark assessments for reading and math. These tests are taken three times per year (fall, winter, and spring) to determine how well our students are progressing and any instructional changes that need to be made. The Washington Public School District uses Fastbridge Learning for its assessments. According to the Fastbridge Learning website, In order to know if a student is making progress toward specific learning goals, a comparison with some type of standard or benchmark of success is needed. The term benchmark is widely used in education to indicate grade-level learning goals for all students. These are scores on certain assessments that have been validated through research to predict that a student will meet later learning goals.