Trying to do the right thing costs too much!

The Delaware Department of Education attempted to introduce both adaptive testing to high stakes as well as provide series of formative test to provide more focused and timely diagnostic feedback to students and teachers. Faced with a stiff price, the state decided to stay with its current assessments for three more years. This is a challenge faced by many SEAs attempting to do the right thing. It's not that they don't know what a better testing system would look like. It's expensive to do this sort of work and most vendors don't have item banks large enough or well enough aligned with coursework. Until there is a mature market in this area, early movers will essentially be subsidizing the development work being done by test vendors.

Chris