Assessments Grounded in Research for Proven Results
University ties underpin the quality of our assessments. Many of our assessments and innovations emerge from collaborations with leading education researchers and psychometricians across the country.
All FastBridge assessments are developed through a rigorous research process. Only those that demonstrate high-quality research and significant outcomes receive technical documentation and become assessments.
Our Research Process
Ideas are translated into a research study with defined materials, participants, procedures, and techniques to measure outcomes.
Once the research plan is verified, one or more controlled studies are conducted to see if the idea works under ideal conditions.
Research articles submitted for technical documentation are sent to two or more researchers who are experts in the same topic as the study.
The assessment has been researched and verified in controlled studies and is now available to districts for a limited, trial use to gather feedback.
With multiple sources of high-quality research, the assessment measure is released from Lab and becomes an endorsed assessment for instructional decision making.
Our Research Manual
Learn more about the research supporting the validity of our assessments.
FastBridge was designed to translate academic research into real-world results for educators by innovating today and implementing tomorrow.
FastBridge works with researchers from the Universities of Minnesota, Georgia, Missouri, Buffalo, South Florida, as well as Penn State and Syracuse University.
FastBridge’s research-based assessments are an industry first — combining Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) and Computer Adaptive Tests (CAT) with combined reporting.
FastBridge was designed to reduce the typical 10- to 30-year gap between university research and classroom results to a few years.
“At the risk of being effusive, I want to express my admiration with the psychometric quality of reading assessments and the FastBridge system specifically…simply put, they are so high-quality. I can trust the results and use them to make decisions without worrying.”
Stephanie Snidarich
Researcher at University of Minnesota
In 2005, Theodore J. Christ and his team of nationally renowned scholars and university-based researchers set out to build knowledge around improving educational assessments. After being granted funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Dr. Christ and his colleagues went to work.
Based on their research, Dr. Christ and Dr. Zoheb H. Borbora developed the Formative Assessment System for Teachers (FAST™), a cloud-based academic assessment system at the University of Minnesota. The goal was to use research and technology to simplify data collection and usage to improve student outcomes.
In 2019, FastBridge Learning became a subsidiary of Illuminate Education and FAST became the FastBridge assessment system, which now provides the core screening, diagnostic, and progress monitoring assessment capabilities for the Illuminate solution.
Are you a doctoral student, faculty member or state department of education employee? We welcome the use of our measures in ongoing research and access to existing FastBridge data for research purposes. If you are interested, please fill out the form below and the FastBridge research department will reach out to you soon.