The term curriculum-based assessment (CBA) was initially popularized with the publication of a special issue of Exceptional Children on that topic in 1985. In that issue, CBA was identified as a practice with a long history in education and characterized as the practice of using the content of instruction as the basis for assessing what students are learning. While appealing, this description does not clearly distinguish CBA from traditional educational achievement tests that use a table of specifications to establish test content validity. A table of specifications frames the content of instruction, and that framework is used to design test items that representatively sample intended instructional outcomes.

More salient differences can be identified between CBA and traditional achievement testing. First, in CBA, the very ...