Addressing inequities in the educational outcomes--particularly for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds--cannot happen without comparable data from statewide summative assessments. Statewide assessment results help schools and district leaders target state and local resources to the students and schools with the greatest need and track whether these resources are impacting student achievement. Despite this, many educators, students, and families say that federal assessment and accountability policies take away from instructional time without providing actionable data. Meanwhile, pandemic pauses in administering statewide assessments and changes in political dynamics at the state and federal levels have opened a window of opportunity to develop new statewide summative assessments that gauge how students are doing, highlight disparities, and show where interventions aren't measuring up to their promise and might be improved. This paper centers the lived experiences and perspectives of students, families, educators, and district and state leaders, so that they can be used to design assessments that provide data that will enable the Ed Trust to promote equitable learning opportunities and improve outcomes for all students. To better understand how directly impacted communities are experiencing statewide assessments, Ed Trust held focus groups with diverse stakeholders who are on the ground, focusing on students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, English learners, and those who work in a school or district in which the majority of students are members of these student groups. The focus group findings informed the creation of "equity pillars," which highlight key values and identify criteria for improving federal assessment policy, and federal policy recommendations for how this vision could be achieved.