NCTE Student Assessments

Developed jointly by Harvard and Educational Testing Services (ETS), the NCTE Student Assessment is an open resource for use by researchers and practitioners (not commercial ventures). The assessment was designed to be sensitive to teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and instruction, and to measure gains resulting from teacher professional development. Additionally, the NCTE Student Assessments are aligned to the 4th and 5th grade Common Core Standards in Mathematics.

The items on the NCTE assessment have a unique "nested set" design which assesses the understanding of a concept at different developmental levels. Additionally, the items on this assessment are designed to:

• Represent central ideas in the subject matter;
• Focus on the meaning of facts and procedures; and
• Require more complex responses than traditional multiple-choice problems. 

The NCTE student assessment materials may be accessed below. They include the following: 

1. Guidelines for administering the NCTE Student Assessments
2. The NCTE Assessment Toolkit which includes everything needed to administer and score the Student Assessments
3. The technical report, which provides an overview of the item development process and a description of the piloting of the assessments.  It also provides item-level results from the psychometric analyses of the eight test forms.