In the summer and fall months of a "typical" year, many education leaders would receive reports of student performance on annual summative state assessments administered each spring. Using these data, administrators begin a process of sense-making -- identifying areas that need support and integrating new information offered by the data into their base of understanding about the performance of their students, school, district, county, and state. However, because the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed teaching and learning over the past two school years, education leaders will need to bring a different mindset to reviewing assessment data from spring 2021. Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on student learning is fundamental for being able to develop responsive supports that address the needs of all students, particularly those most affected by the disruptions to learning in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years. . Meaningful assessment data are essential for policymakers and stakeholders designating funding and determining eligibility requirements for programs that can impact student learning, such as state-supported professional learning resources and relief funding from sources such as the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP). In response to flexibility offered by the federal Department of Education, many states developed plans for assessment in the 2020-21 school year that decouple summative assessment data from federal accountability requirements and that offer alternatives in situations in which student participation in the state's traditional summative assessment is not viable. For these plans to be effective, educators will need to pay attention to data, including assessment results, beyond just the state's summative test. Furthermore, state and local education agencies will need to decide which data can provide meaningful information about student, school, and system performance. Accordingly, it is particularly important this year for states and districts to understand best practices for using and analyzing data to support student learning. This brief answers some timely questions about how to think about assessment information at this unique moment, and offers several suggestions and considerations about how to use assessment data to inform decisions about teaching and learning.