The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is a standardized test consortium. It creates Common Core State Standards-aligned tests (“adaptive online exams”) to be used in several states. It uses automated essay scoring. Its counterpart in the effort to become a leading multi-state test provider is the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
Beginning in the Spring of 2015, SBAC began assessing students with their new assessment format. The assessments are given in grades 3 – 8 and 11, in the content areas of Math and English Language Arts. Each test called a Summative Assessment, consists of a Performance Task (PT) and a Computer-Adaptive Test (CAT).