In 2017, Breakthrough Technologies completed a significant milestone. The Validity Assessment Platform completed its millionth test in the US K12 market. Validity is an open-source assessment platform that can be deployed by states to administer summative assessments in Science, Mathematics, ELA and social science. Breakthrough currently offers this platform to any state desiring to administer high-quality, secure assessments at scale to the students of their state.
Typically, Validity is used as a QTI item-ingestion platform, with full features for item editing, creation, and management, as well as test management and test publication. Validity features a web-based test driver that is accessible from all delivery platforms, including iOS and Chromebook environments. Breakthrough also offers secure browsers to deliver those assessments within those environments.
The millionth administration was a big milestone for the team. Doug Wilson, Managing Partner of Breakthrough Technologies, said "Achieving this milestone was a huge win for the team. We have been working for over five years to show the world that open source assessment platforms are a viable alternative to proprietary solutions. We feel that by delivering a million tests to the K12 community, we are demonstrating its value as a world-class assessment platform."
Amy Lavery, the Strategic Solutions Director for Breakthrough Technologies large-scale assessment team notes, "Validity has been a project that we have kept fairly close to the vest. We now feel we are ready to share the platform and its results with the rest of the world."
Breakthrough has been offering states service contracts to stand up the test platform, support it during the test windows, host it on the Amazon Cloud, and integrate with rostering and reporting platforms as needed. The ultimate goal is to allow these states to manage the platform with their own technical teams if desired. Katrina Kasten, Senior Project Manager for Breakthrough elaborates, "The Validity platform is not just a large body of open-source code. It also includes teams with the demonstrated knowledge and expertise to deploy this platform at scale. Breakthrough has worked extremely hard to build and maintain a support team that lowers the cost of implementation and guarantees a successful testing window."
Breakthrough remains committed to delivering high-value testing platforms across all the markets that it serves. If you would like to hear more about the testing platform, you can contact us, and one of our representatives will be happy to review the success of our work and answer any questions you might have.