School Improvement in Maryland

HSA: High School Assessment Program

 

What does HSA look like?

The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) releases a form of the high school assessment to provide students, teachers, and the public an example of how students are being assessed. The items included on these Public Release Forms measure students' knowledge of skills, processes and concepts as stated in the Core Learning Goal indicators.

When you click on any of the assessments, you will be able to view all the items on that assessment, see which indicators were measured, view field test data, take mini-assessments online, print the form, view the rubric, listen to an explanation of the rubric and anchor papers used to score the constructed responses, and practice scoring actual student responses.

While the items in the public release form have been selected to be indicative of items that may be used in future years, there are two caveats:

  1. Both the number of items and the mix of selected and constructed response will vary in future forms of the assessment. The sample assessments now released do not include items that are currently being field-tested. Future paper and pencil forms of the assessment that will be given in schools will include up to 30 minutes of time devoted to field testing new items for use on future assessments.
  2. The items of this sample assessment represent varying difficulty levels, and each item represents only one way to assess an indicator. Scoring correctly or well on a particular item does not necessarily indicate proficiency on the indicator assessed.
 

Algebra/Data Analysis

View the assessment
2009 • 08 • 07 • 06 • 05 • 04

Mini-Assessments
2009 • 08 • 07 • 06 • 05 • 04

Practice scoring BCRs and ECRs
2008 • 07 • 06 • 05 • 04

Print the assessment (pdf)
2009 • 08 • 07 • 06 •05 • 04

Answer key (for pdf)
2009 • 08 • 07 • 06 • 05 • 04

Goals, expectations and indicators assessed
2009 • 08 • 07 • 06 • 05 • 04

Rubric • Current

More about the assessment • Current