Computer Adaptive Test

Computer Adaptive Tests (CAT) are a framework for adapting the difficulty of items students see based upon their previous responses. The figure below depicts the CAT framework used for the mathematics and reading assessments. Students receive an initial block of six questions of medium difficulty. If they answer five or six questions currectly they will then receive a difficult item block, if they answer three or four questions correctly they will receive another question block of medium difficulty, and if they answer two or fewer questions correctly they will reveive a question block of easy difficulty. Students will need to complete at least three blocks in this design (18 questions). For students who do not remain in the same difficulty band for two consecutive question blocks will receive a fourth block of questions. Note that all of these parameters (i.e. number of questions per block, starting block difficulty, rubric to determine next block, minimum and maximum number of question blocks) are all configurable.

Note

For the mathematics assessment each question block contains one question from each of the six subdomains. This ensures there is appropriate domain coverage in the assessment. For the reading assessment, each block consists of a reading passage with questions related to that passage. The difficulty of each block for the reading assessment was determined using the Flesch-Kincaid readability measure.