A Framework to Evaluate Cognitive Complexity in Science Assessments

Achieve’s new science cognitive complexity framework offers a new approach to capturing and communicating the complexity of summative assessment items and tasks designed for three-dimensional standards. The complexity framework can be used to assess the degree to which an assessment task asks students to intellectually engage in and make use of disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and cross-cutting concepts in service of sense-making. The new framework allows for both the analysis of individual items or tasks and the holistic analysis of multi-component tasks or item clusters. 

For more information about Achieve's Cognitive Complexity Frameworks in mathematics, reading, and science, click here.