Common State Assessments

An unprecedented confluence of events — increased federal funding, voluntary development of common state standards, increased availability of technology for administering assessments and advances in assessment design — make common state assessments that measure common content standards more likely than ever before. States have formed consortia to compete for Race to the Top Assessment (RTTTA) funding, with the goal of developing a next-generation assessment system.

At ETS, we are ready to help in the common assessments initiative with information, research and practical experience in the following areas based on decades of research and development:

• Next-Generation Assessment Systems
• Adaptive Testing
• Comparability
• High School Assessments
• Automated Scoring

Two consortia have been awarded funding through the RTTTA competition to design new assessment systems: SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers (PARCC). Short illustrations of their assessment system models were designed by the Center for K–12 Assessment & Performance Management at ETS (the Center) and approved by the consortia:

• SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium
• Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers

In March of 2011 the Center organized the Invitational Research Symposium on Through-Course Summative Assessments. This two-day event was co-sponsored by ETS and 18 other testing companies and organizations. More than 100 state and national leaders and assessment experts engaged in exploration of the measurement challenges presented by the through-course summative assessments and potential solutions to those challenges. ETS staff presented on Theory of action and validity argument in the context of through-course summative assessment and Scaling and linking through-course summative assessments.

The Center also created a guide with information about the common core state standards and an in-depth description of the two assessment consortia.

The RTTTA funding competition has also awarded grants to two consortia to develop a new generation of alternate assessments for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities: National Center and State Collaborative Partnership and Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate Assessment System Consortium.

Contact Us

We hope that you will look to us as a resource when considering your needs for an assessment of common core standards. We welcome the opportunity to meet and discuss any of these issues with you.

For more information, please contact:

John Oswald	Nancy Segal
Sr. Vice President & General Manager ETS K–12 Assessment Programs	Director of Government Relations 1-202-659-8076
k12assessments@ets.org	k12assessments@ets.org