ASSESSMENT
Assessment is Getting Personal
Reginald M. Gooch and Jesse R. Sparks
Over the past several years, technological capabilities have grown enormously, allowing new possibilities for customizing educational products and services to meet the needs of all students. Assessment is no exception – innovations that have the potential to revolutionize typical practices in designing and implementing educational assessment are on the horizon. Personalized assessment has great potential to enable more accurate measurement of the skills we value and to increase fairness for all learners. Yet, bringing personalization into the design of assessments raises particular challenges, some of which our work at ETS is centered on addressing.
Following a systematic research agenda, we are
- investigating the individual-level factors that could be used to personalize assessments, like language, interests, prior knowledge, and cultural background,
- exploring how personalized assessments can support learning and individual growth,
- pioneering measurement methods for comparing results from personalized assessments,
- building theories to help test-makers decide when personalization is appropriate and how to implement it, and
- gathering evidence for how personalization affects student outcomes.
Our goal is to answer the question: Can personalized assessment truly have a positive impact for all learners?
Through research and technological innovation, we aim to make assessments fairer and more effective for all test takers.
- There are endless combinations of how and to what degree personalization could be implemented into assessment. Our research is providing crucial guidance for how to maximize the benefits of personalization in different circumstances for learners, teachers, and education policymakers.
- By basing personalization on a wider set of evidence about the personal qualities that test takers bring with them to the assessment (such as background knowledge, interests, and prior experiences), we are finding ways to reduce test anxiety, increase motivation, and get a more accurate picture of what test takers are truly capable of.
- We are demonstrating how technology now enables personalizing the supports that learners receive during assessments. Providing appropriate scaffolding can help them better engage with the subject matter and provide teachers with better information to inform instruction – for example, by providing language supports to English learners who would be unable to complete English-language assessments on their own.
- Personalized assessments require new approaches to make scores and reports as useful and understandable as possible. We’re leading the way through pioneering innovative methods for comparing performances on different assessment experiences and through research into optimizing how results are presented to inform instruction and empower learning.
- We are working directly with teachers and students on innovative test designs to understand and share how personalized assessments should work to meet the needs of the most important people in the education system – students and their teachers.
- Through our rigorous and systematic program of research, we will continue to better understand and share out evidence of best practices in personalized assessment so that the education system as a whole may benefit.
To find out more about our team’s cutting-edge research in personalized assessment, join us at the 2025 American Educational Research Association (AERA) and National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) conferences or follow us in this space and at our researchers’ LinkedIn profiles.
Applications of Bayesian Networks in the Age of AI. Training Session. (8:00 a.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Denver Ballroom 4)
Tools and Strategies for the Design and Evaluation of Interactive Dashboard Reports. Training Session. (1:00 p.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Colorado Ballroom CD)
On-the-fly Context Personalization of Mathematics Word Problems through Generative AI (Context-AI). In session Innovation Demonstration Session 1. (9:45 a.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Colorado Ballroom GH)
Are Standardized Admissions Tests Fair? If Not, How Might We Make Them Fairer? Organized Discussion. (9:45 a.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Mattie Silks Room)
Formative Assessment and Educational Measurement. In session On the Nature and Rigor of Classroom Assessment. (11:30 a.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Denver Ballroom 1-2)
Added Value of Subscores for Tests with Polytomous Items. In session Score Reporting. (3:15 p.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Denver Ballroom 3)
Enhancing AI-Math Conversations with Learning Progressions. In session Applications of Generative AI to Mathematics Education: Opportunities and Challenges. (3:15 p.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Penrose Ballroom 2)
Explorations in Using Student Solution Pathways and LLMs for Enhanced Mathematical Learning. In session Applications of Generative AI to Mathematics Education: Opportunities and Challenges. (3:15 p.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Penrose Ballroom 2)
Findings from Culturally Responsive Assessments Comprising Original and Adapted NAEP Items. In session Content, Item, and Test Development. (9:45 a.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Denver Ballroom, 5-6).
Relationships among Effort, Motivation, and Performance on NAEP Mathematics. In session Examining Student Behavior in Large-Scale Survey-Based Assessments. (3:15 p.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Denver Ballroom 5-6)
Engagement across Grade Levels on a Low-Stakes, Large-Scale Assessment of Mathematics. In session Understanding Test-Taking (Dis)engagement: Predictors, Test Design, and Eye Movements in Low-Stakes Assessments. (4:30 p.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Denver Ballroom 5-6)
Micro-Models of Student Engagement: A Bottom-Up Approach to Learner Modeling. In session The Influence of Digital Tools on Literacy, Learning Engagement, and Student Development (8:00 a.m., Colorado Convention Center, Bluebird Ballroom Room 3D)
Predicting Mathematics Item Difficulty for Automated Item Development Workflows. In session Leveraging Large-Language Models for Operational Large-Scale Assessments: Opportunities and Challenges. (9:45 a.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Denver Ballroom 1-2)
Socioculturally Responsive Assessment and Measurement: Implications for Theory, Measurement, and Systems-Level Policy. (11:30 a.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Colorado Ballroom CD)
Predicting Success: Joint Modeling of Retake Behaviors in Teacher Licensure Assessment. In session Licensure and Certification. (3:15 p.m., Hilton Denver City Center, Colorado Ballroom AB)
The Impact of Remembered Success Experiences on Children’s Cost Perceptions in the Math Domain. In session Using the Concept of Perceived Cost to Bridge Cognitive and Motivational Theories of Student Learning. (3:20 p.m., Colorado Convention Center, Bluebird Ballroom Room 3C)
Measuring Persistence and Academic Resilience: Systematic Review and Operational Definitions. In session Advances in STEM Learning and Educational Psychology (5:10 p.m., Colorado Convention Center, Exhibit Hall F)
Using Personalized Assessments to Respond to the Needs of Multilingual Learners: Teacher Insights. In session Designing AI-Powered Personalized Educational Tools by Incorporating Teachers’ Perspectives (8:00 a.m., Colorado Convention Center, Room 103)
On-the-Fly Context Personalization with Generative AI in Mathematics Assessments: Co-Designing with Teachers. In session Designing AI-Powered Personalized Educational Tools by Incorporating Teachers’ Perspectives (8:00 a.m., Colorado Convention Center, Room 103)
The Role of Teachers in Digital Personalized Assessments. In session Designing AI-Powered Personalized Educational Tools by Incorporating Teachers’ Perspectives (8:00 a.m., Colorado Convention Center, Room 103)
Designing and Evaluating AI-Enhanced Interactive Reports with Teachers. In session Designing AI-Powered Personalized Educational Tools by Incorporating Teachers’ Perspectives (8:00 a.m., Colorado Convention Center, Room 103)
Enhancing English Language Arts Assessments for Multilingual Learners: A Co-Design Approach. In session Advancing Educational Equity for Multilingual Learners: From Community Programs to Formative Writing Assessments (1:30 p.m., Colorado Convention Center, Four Seasons Ballroom 1)