Rigorous Test Development

The Rigorous Test Development Project

The RTD (Rigorous Test Development) project is an attempt to build a professionalized content development practice that focuses on individual item quality, particularly by leaning into the importance of validity throughout the content development process. It assumes that content development professionals develop professional judgment that can be raised, honed and calibrated by providing frameworks and clarifying expectations in ways that account for the constraints and demands of typical practice within test development, today.

The RTD logo (to the right) is of a fox emerging from a black box. We use a black box because the field of educational measurment has treated content development work as a black box that it has no interest in looking inside. We use a fox because item development requires diving into detail and ambiguity with a variety of tools, rather than just using a single tool or lens—mantra notwithstanding.