Curriculum-Based Assessment: A Comparison of Models

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Abstract
Curriculum-Based Assessment (CBA) has been proposed widely in recent years as a strategy for improved decision-making practices with students with academic difficulties. Proliferation of the calls for increased use of CBA has masked information that CBA is not a set of unified and agreed upon assessment practices. In fact, CBA can represent a wide variety of assessment strategies that use curriculum materials for testing. This article presents four commonly used CBA models and compares them along a set of important dimensions including primary decision-making purpose, usefulness for other types of decisions, relationship to instructional planning, test formats, and technical adequacy. The article proposes that the CBA models are not incompatible, but that selection of a particular strategy will depend on the type of decision to be made about a student.