Giving Compass' Take:

• Emily Tate explains how Imbellus aims to replace the SAT and ACT by providing a better - but admittedly imperfect - testing system. 

• Is better good enough? Should these tests be replaced? 

• Learn how testing is intertwined with equity. 

Rebecca Kantar is fighting an uphill battle. She says so herself.

The 26-year-old entrepreneur has set out to replace the standardized tests that are deeply entrenched in K-12 and higher education, like the SAT and ACT, and she tells EdSurge her efforts to do so are sure to spark controversy.

But if Kantar is fighting an uphill battle for Imbellus, the simulation-based assessment company she founded in 2016 and now manages, then a handful of venture capital firms are ready to fight it with her.

Kantar wanted to break all the rules of assessment. The vision she had then, and is in pursuit of now, is a radical one. But it has support—and not just from investors.

Developed with learning science, psychometrics and artificial intelligence, Imbellus is a digital, scenario-based assessment set in the context of the natural world. Some scenarios play out underwater, for example, or in a forest. (The assessment excludes humans and man-made markers, such as shopping malls or hospitals, because those have proven to add bias.) Those who take the assessment must decipher complex patterns, solve problems and think analytically. Such skills—and others, like creativity and reasoning—are the ones employers actually care about, Kantar says.

She doesn’t think she has a silver bullet with Imbellus—because she doesn’t think a silver bullet exists, period—but she does think what she has is a better measure of human progress and capability than what’s accepted by schools, colleges, and employers today.

“There’s no great assessment going to fix it all,” she says. “It’s just a question of getting marginally better.”

Read the full article about Imbellus by Emily Tate at EdSurge.