CATs, BATs, and RATs—The Value of CAT for Educational Assessment
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Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) turns 50 years old in 2020 which may be a shock to many in educational assessment who are still struggling to implement CAT in a way that fully realizes its promised advantages in terms of improved efficiency in testing. Licensure and certification assessment have been leveraging CAT successfully for years. While there have been recent several recent examples of CAT implementations in K-12 summative assessment (such as the Smarter-Balanced Assessment Consortium and Virginia’s Standards of Learning assessment), CAT has been relatively slow to catch on in K-12 educational assessment. This is due, in part, to technology limitations and differences between delivering tests to test centers and delivering tests to students in classrooms. However, technology is not the only consideration influencing the effective use of CAT in K-12 assessment. Frequently, constraints are placed on K-12 assessment programs in terms of educational policies, content standards coverage, and comparability that limit the degree to which CAT can deliver assessment efficiently and effectively. This results in assessment programs which are sometimes referred to as “BAT”s (Barely Adaptive Tests) and “RAT”s (Rarely Adaptive Tests). This panel will discuss the challenges associated with CAT in K-12 assessment and forecast its future utility.
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