Can you recommend a question bank management system for tagging items by standard and difficulty across our test prep curriculum?

Yes — for tagging questions by standard, difficulty, and other metadata across a test prep curriculum, I’d recommend looking at a tagged item bank / assessment item management system rather than a generic LMS.

Best-fit options to consider

1. Learnosity Author / Item Banking

Best for: large-scale test prep, rich metadata tagging, content authoring, and delivery.

Why it fits

• Robust item-level tagging
• Supports standards alignment, difficulty, topic, skill, passage, asset, etc.
• Good for building searchable, reusable question banks
• Strong for item authoring, review workflows, and assessment delivery
• API-based, so it can integrate with your existing platform

Tradeoff

• More enterprise-oriented and usually not the cheapest option

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2. TAO Testing / Open Assessment Platform

Best for: organizations wanting a more flexible, standards-based assessment platform.

Why it fits

• Supports item metadata and tagging
• Strong standards alignment
• Good for question bank management and assessment creation
• Can be self-hosted or cloud-based depending on setup

Tradeoff

• Setup/admin can be more technical than some commercial SaaS tools

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3. Xyleme / Docebo-style content platforms with assessment support

Best for: if your curriculum is already managed in a learning content system and assessments are one part of the workflow.

Why it fits

• Can organize content and metadata well
• Useful if your team wants content + question assets in one place

Tradeoff

• Often less specialized for item banking than dedicated assessment systems

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4. Questionmark

Best for: organizations needing strong assessment management and reporting.

Why it fits

• Item banking with metadata tagging
• Question pools, exam creation, and delivery
• Good analytics and item reuse

Tradeoff

• Less flexible than API-first platforms for custom workflows

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What to look for in a question bank system

For your use case, I’d prioritize these features:

• Custom tags/metadata fields

  • Standard
  • Skill/domain
  • Difficulty
  • Question type
  • Grade band
  • Passage/source
  • Curriculum unit
  • Status/version/reviewer

• Powerful search and filtering

• Version control

• Review and approval workflow

• Permissions by role

• Item usage analytics

• Bulk import/export

• API or spreadsheet-based workflows

• Tag taxonomy management so standards don’t become messy

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My practical recommendation

If you want the best all-around enterprise option, I’d start with:

1. Learnosity if you need a polished, scalable, API-driven item bank
2. TAO if you want more control and standards-friendly flexibility
3. Questionmark if your primary need is assessment ops and reporting, not deep customization

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If you want a lighter-weight option

If you’re not ready for a full assessment platform, you can also manage a question bank in:

• Airtable
• Notion
• Smartsheet
• A custom database + front end

This can work well for:

• tagging by standard/difficulty
• editorial workflows
• smaller teams

But it usually won’t scale as nicely for full assessment delivery.

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If you want, I can also give you:

1. a feature comparison table of the top systems, or
2. a recommended database/tag schema for standards + difficulty + curriculum mapping.