About Us

The Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation (CETE) is a laboratory at the University of Kansas housed within the School of Education. CETE was authorized by the Kansas Board of Regents in 1983 to function as a research and evaluation unit under the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, Graduate Studies, and Public Service at the University of Kansas. CETE was founded by Drs. Douglas Glasnapp and John Poggio who stepped down as co-directors June 30th 2009 at which time Dr. Neal Kingston assumed the role of director.

Our Mission

CETE’s mission is to improve the state of student assessment by

  • conducting research in support of testing programs that facilitate student learning,
  • providing test sponsors with test administration, results reporting, and professional development, and
  • providing graduate students with operational and research experiences vital to their professional development.

Kansas Assessment Program (KAP)

CETE has worked with the State of Kansas for the past 30 years to provide all Kansas schools with a variety of assessment services.

CETE offers the following assessments to all 289 school districts in the state of Kansas.

  • summative assessment in math, reading, science, and social studies
  • interim assessment, which are testlet based adaptive, in math and reading
  • formative assessment in math, reading, science, and social studies

More than 15,000 educators throughout the state of Kansas use CETE’s Test Builder (Content/Item Builder) and reporting systems.

KAP statistics for the 2010-11 school year:

CETE administered:

  • 1.84 million summative test sessions
  • 2.82 million formative test sessions
  • Over 91,500 interim test sessions

Kansas had a record 99.7 percent of students take computer-based assessments during the 2010-11 school year.

Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate Assessment System (DLM)

CETE leads the Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate Assessment System Consortium (DLM), a consortium of 13 states. In 2010, the consortium was awarded a U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) grant for $22 million to develop a next-generation alternate assessment system based on Dynamic Learning Maps.

Career Pathways Collaborative (CPC)

CETE is currently in development of the Career Pathways Collaborative (CPC). CPC is an assessment designed for high school students to test their readiness for technical training or entry into the workforce.

Currently CETE is working on nine pathways of assessment:

  • General Agriculture
  • Animal Science
  • Plant Science
  • Production
  • Maintenance
  • General Business
  • Finance
  • Marketing
  • Education

The Adaptive Reading Motivation Measures (The ARMM)

CETE is collaborating with KU’s Center for Research on Learning (CRL) for The Adaptive Reading Motivation Measures (The ARMM), an Institution of Education Sciences funded project. The ARMM will develop and provide large-sample validation of new measures of reading motivation for use with adolescents in grades 5-12. The project will use an online computer adaptive format to both simultaneously increase reliability, while reducing assessment time. School districts in Kansas and California will participate.