NZCER was one of several organisations involved in the development of the Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT) for the Ministry of Education. You can find out more on the PaCT website.
PaCT is intended to help teachers make consistent judgments against the National Standards in reading, writing and maths. NZCER was responsible for facilitating the psychometric work associated with the tool development and we collaborated with a number of organisations on this work.
The PaCT tool has three components:
• an assessment rubric for each of the learning areas relevant to the National Standards (reading, writing and mathematics)
• a database to record student details and assessment records
• a reporting engine to present information that allows teachers and schools to link rubric scores, and test results for individual students and cohorts of students to national standards levels and monitor progress over time.
NZCER is currently carrying out work for the Ministry of Education looking at how reporting for the PaCT can be enhanced to carry more descriptive information about achievement and progress.