ETS to Enter Formative-Assessment Market at K-12 Level

The Educational Testing Service was expected to solidify its foray into K-12 education this week by unveiling a new, online “item bank” that teachers can use to produce classroom assessments aligned with state academic-content standards.

The ETS Formative Assessment Item Bank includes more than 11,000 standards-based mathematics and language arts questions that teachers can use to craft classroom tests and quizzes to track student performance throughout the year and modify instruction when necessary. Districts also can use the item bank to design benchmark, or interim, assessments aligned with their states’ end-of-year tests.

The formative-assessment market is one of the fastest-growing segments of test publishing. And the nonprofit ETS, of Princeton, N.J., joins a growing list of companies that are already offering such services, including CTB/McGraw-Hill, based in Monterey, Calif.; the Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Cos.; and Kaplan K12 Learning Services,...