Skip to main content

Field Test

Field-test items are embedded in the spring operational forms to collect data necessary to support the assessment system for future administrations. Field-test administration entails paper and computer administration modes, with computer administration as the dominant mode. The ELA/L unit of field-test items are administered to a sample of students. 

Field-test sets are constructed to balance cognitive difficulty across forms, reflected in the number of points, distribution of task types, and balance of passages for ELA/L. Forms for each content area are spiraled at the student level. The data collection design entails three conditions:

  • Condition 1, which comprises the mathematics assessment, is a field-test model in which all students taking the summative assessment participated in the field test.
  • Under Condition 2, which comprises the ELA/L assessment, approximately one-third of the schools are sampled across some of the participating states. Students in the sampled schools or districts take forms containing ELA/L field-test tasks. Schools or districts are selected so that the sample for each ELA/L assessment is representative of the general testing populations in terms of achievement (i.e., average scale score and percentage of students at Level 4 and Level 5 in the previous year) and demographics (i.e., ethnicity composition, percentage of economically disadvantaged, English learners, and students with disabilities). The sampling plan is created such that if a given school was part of the ELA/L field test one year (e.g., spring 2017), it would not be required to participate in the field test for the subsequent two years (e.g., spring 2018 and spring 2019).
  • For Condition 3, states or agencies may select to field-test two ELA/L grade levels rather than all grade levels. The grade levels selected participate in a field-test where all students are administered the embedded field-test items. The remaining grade levels do not participate in field-testing. The selected grade levels are rotated across years.