Adaptive Assessments: Something to Think About

From Education Week....something to think about as this week ends.

 

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01adaptive.h06.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW

 

Apparently, Delaware switched to computer-adaptive testing for its state assessments three years ago It made result available more quickly and students spent less time TAKING tests. 

 

According to this article, 

"Nationally, two coalitions have received federal funding to develop English/language arts and mathematics tests for the common standards. Both coalitions—the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC—have said their assessments will feature high-tech, interactive questions that incorporate video and graphics and are designed both to identify what students know and to be more engaging.
Both assessments will be given online, but Smarter Balanced will use adaptive testing, while PARCC will use what are known as fixed-form tests, which feature set questions that generally do not change."

So I wanted to know a bit more about adaptive assessments and how they work and this article went on to say,
" The range of proficiency among kids in a grade is huge,” says Jon Cohen, the executive vice president and director of assessment for the Washington-based American Institutes for Research, which is already delivering statewide adaptive tests in several states and has been selected by the Smarter Balanced consortium to do pilot and field testing and to create the adaptive-test algorithm.
“With a typical test, a kid who is struggling is not going to see many items they can get right, and a kid at the top is not going to see many items they’ll get wrong,” he says. “Kids on the ends get a less precise score.”.....
"Computer-adaptive assessments aren’t scored on the basis of how many right or wrong answers a student gets. A student’s score depends both on the number of items he or she got right and the difficulty of the items presented."

Some more sites to consider or at least places I explored! 
http://www.nwea.org/products-services/assessments
http://www.smarterbalanced.org/smarter-balanced-assessments/computer-adaptive-testing/

AND BEFORE WE ALL JUMP ON THIS BANDWAGON....a little something from Diane R.
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/09/06/the-problem-with-computer-adaptive-assessments/
 
":My kid doesn’t like online adaptive assessments. She likes knowing there are 50 questions in 40 minutes. She hates tests that give you many more difficult questions when you answer correctly. The test seems to go on forever.
So, one time she decided to hit buttons randomly and get a bunch wrong. Then the computer spit out fewer, easier questions, and she was able to finish the test at last."