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The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) releases a form of the high school assessment each year to provide students, teachers, and the public an example of how students are being assessed.
MSDE staff and Maryland teachers have been writing and selecting test items since 1999. Potential test items go through an extensive process of editing and review to improve, correct, or eliminate poor items. Items are then field tested in schools. Based on an analysis of the field test responses, MSDE selects those items that help us reliably measure student performance for future test forms. The released assessments consist of a mixture of selected (multiple choice) and constructed (short and long written) response items (including gridded response items in the mathematics assessments). They are all psychometrically valid and reliable.
When you click on any of the assessments, you will be able to view all the items on that assessment, take the test online, listen to an explanation of the rubric and anchor papers used to score the item, and practice scoring 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Hear more about how scorers assess HSA |
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