Dive Brief:

• The Educational Records Bureau went back to the drawing board after receiving requests from schools to create a cheaper, shorter, and more engaging exam for the iPad.  
• The final result is the Admission Assessment for Beginning Learners (AABL), which clocks in at only 50 minutes (instead of the 75 minutes of the previous exam), costs only $65 (instead of the previous $568), and has a turn around time of three-to-five days (versus three weeks). 
• Beyond improvements in the price and time, the ERB made efforts to engage students taking the test by hiring professional illustrators for its iPad exam.  

Dive Insight:

The AABL is an assessment given to students in pre-K through first grade who are applying for a seat at a private school, or an assessment given once in any school to see where a student is at. The Education Records Bureau is also responsible for creating an exam that is used by private middle schools when choosing which students to accept for the seventh grade.  

According to Denise Mutlu, vice president of assessment development at ERB, the AABL exam is unique in that it tests reasoning in addition to knowledge and achievement. This trio of skills is rarely assessed on the same test, according to Mutlu.