When Do States Test? Every K-8 Assessment Calendar, Compared

Every state runs its own K-8 assessment on its own calendar, and almost none of them explain it in a way a parent can act on. We compared the published assessment programmes of all 51 states and DC — what each tests, and when.

Key findings

• 50 of 51 states test in a single spring window, typically between March and May — so for most families there is one date that matters each year.
• Florida is the outlier: it runs three progress-monitoring windows across the year, with the spring result counting as the score of record. That gives Florida parents two early diagnostics nobody else gets.
• 49 states test science in the K-8 range, and 8 test social studies — usually at just one or two grades, which parents routinely miss.
• Most states publish a window, not a date. Districts choose their exact days inside it, which is why “when is the test?” can only ever be answered by your school.

What gets tested beyond reading and maths

What this means for preparing

A single spring window means preparation is a marathon with one finish line: steady practice from winter beats anything attempted in April. Where a state runs multiple windows, the early ones are a gift — they tell you exactly which strands to work on before the result that counts. And because gifted screening runs on a completely separate autumn calendar, families pursuing both are managing two timelines, not one.

See your state's window and official calendar on our state test dates page.

Methodology

Figures are computed live from the iPrepGenius question bank (131,000+verified, unretired practice questions at the time you loaded this page). Our banks are original practice content modeled on each test's published blueprint and format; they are not actual test items, and findings describe our bank's composition — a faithful proxy for, but not a publication of, the tests themselves. Difficulty ratings use our 1–5 scale assigned at generation and refined by calibration. Aggregated practice statistics, where shown, are fully anonymized. You're welcome to cite this study with a link.