MPSP - Tools and Services: Assessment

Formative Assessments

Every six to seven weeks, we administer two assessments – one in English and one in Mathematics – to students in grades 5, 6, 7, and 8. Each assessment takes place during one regular classroom period and tests the material the teachers have recently covered.

MPSP's unique assessments have the following strengths:

Standards-based. Assessments are designed and implemented in ways that make the state standards a constant presence in the classroom, reinforcing the intent of the standards and helping schools identify gaps in their academic programs.
MCAS degree of difficulty. Assessments are designed to model the degree of difficulty of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) assessments.
Scope and Sequence Alignment. Assessments have been aligned to the scope and sequences of participating schools. They measure skills that actually have been taught at that point in time in the classroom – not merely knowledge the student should have at the end of the year.
Network-wide. The same assessments are used across the MPSP Network to allow for comparable data.
Paper-based. Assessments are paper-based to provide the same test format and environment as the state-mandated MCAS tests.
Low administrative impact. Regularly scheduled administration takes place during a regular school day and class time, which minimizes impact on students and staff.
Affordable. Assessments are designed to be affordable.

Field Notes

Most public schools have not found an objective, accurate means to understand how their students are doing relative to state standards. While students take the MCAS in the spring, schools receive scores the following fall. The most sophisticated leadership teams try to look at the test questions and determine what standards were covered and how their school did overall on these standards. Yet, the benefits of this analysis to instruction are limited throughout the year for several reasons. First, MCAS results are returned to schools after students have already passed onto the next grade level. In addition, getting true specificity is a challenge because there may be only one question on the MCAS measuring a standard. Since each standard requires multiple skills, it is difficult to identify with certainty the gaps in student knowledge.

For example, a 6th grade MCAS problem may ask students to find the area of a circle when given the radius (see problem #22 below).

22.)  If a circle has a radius of 3 inches, which is the best estimate of its area?
A. 6 square inches

B.   28.26 square inches

C.   9.42 square inches

D.   113.04 square inches
Correct Answer: B  

If a majority of the students get this one question wrong, it is very difficult to understand exactly what concept or concepts the students did not understand. To complete this problem successfully students must understand how to:

Compute using the formula A = π r²
Compute with exponents (3²)
Multiply a whole number with a decimal (3.14 × 9)
Multiply whole numbers using carrying. (9 × 4), (9 × 1 + 3), (9 × 3 + 1)

All four steps involve separate 6th grade math standards. If students answer this problem incorrectly, the information reported does not indicate where the breakdown of student understanding occurred. The only way to truly understand why students may have missed this problem is to provide a more specific breakdown of the standards throughout the year. The breakdown needs to illustrate whether students understand each of the separate standards after they have been taught. MPSP assessments provide this detailed breakdown for each standard throughout the year, helping teachers know where to intervene and help students throughout the year.