Summative assessments measure students' mastery of grade-level academic standards and skills in specific content areas after learning. State summative assessment systems provide students and families, school and district leaders, and state policymakers with valuable data to help understand student progress and school quality. This Policy Guide…

The purposes of this study are twofold. First, to investigate the construct or factorial structure of a set of Reading and Mathematics computerized adaptive tests (CAT), "Measures of Academic Progress" (MAP), given in different states at different grades and academic terms. The second purpose is to investigate the invariance of test…

This study investigated the effects of using modified items in achievement tests to enhance accessibility. An experiment determined whether tests composed of modified items would reduce the performance gap between students eligible for an alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS) and students not eligible, and the…

The Northwest Evaluation Association helped an Indiana school district develop a computerized adaptive testing system that was aligned with its curriculum and geared toward measuring individual student growth. Now the district can obtain such information from semester to semester and year to year, get immediate results, and test students on…