Opinion
Markets Opinion

School Improvement RFP of the Week (1): Assessing Maryland’s Tests Against Maryland’s Standards

July 01, 2008 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

From Monday’s issue of K-12Leads and Youth Service Markets Report.
Announcement: Alignment Study Consultant and Reports Due July 15 (Jun 26), Maryland Department of Education

Their Description:

The United States Department of Education (USED) is conducting a Standards and Assessment Peer Review of each state’s content standards and assessment program to document compliance with requirements specified by No Child Left Behind. Components of this Peer Review require studies to be conducted by entities outside the state departments of education....

This RFP is to solicit a qualified Contractor for consulting services in conducting alignment studies as requested by MSDE.... The Contractor shall provide alignment studies, in report format, that delineate the relationships between the structure of the content standards and the structure of the assessments. The study shall include appropriate documentation needed to help meet evidentiary requirements specified for the Standards and Assessments Peer Review Process as indicated in Sections 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6. of the Standards and Assessments Peer Review Guidance....

The Maryland assessments to be evaluated for this study include....

• The Modified High School Assessment in Algebra/Data Analysis

• The Modified High School Assessment in Biology

• The Modified High School Assessment in English

• The Modified High School Assessment in Government

• The Maryland School Assessment in Science in grade 5

• The Maryland School Assessment in Science in grade 8, and

• The Maryland High School Assessment in Biology.

Each study shall identify:

a. whether the identified Maryland assessments... cover the full range of content... in the State’s academic content standards, meaning that all... standards are represented... in the assessments,

b..... measure both the content (what students know) and the process (what students can do) aspects of the academic content standards,

c. ....reflect the same degree and pattern of emphasis apparent in the academic content standards (e.g., if the academic content standards place a lot of emphasis on operations then so should the assessments),

d. ....reflect the full range of cognitive complexity and level of difficulty of the concepts and processes described, and depth represented, in the State’s academic content standards, meaning that the assessments are as demanding as the standards, including an evaluation of the use and placement of item types as they relate to cognitive complexity, including selected response items, brief constructed response items, extended constructed response items, and student-produced response items (sometime referred to as “gridded items”),

e. ....yield results that represent all achievement levels specified in the State’s academic achievement standards, and,

f. any gaps or weaknesses found in the identified Maryland assessments as related to State content standards and make recommendations for improvements.

My Thoughts: Someday, someone will come up with an automated “expert systems” approach to standards alignment. (Align to Achieve came close before its owners and partners pulled the plug.) Today, it is almost entirely based on an expert eyeballing a standard and a test item and using judgment to decide on a match.

K-12Leads and Youth Service Markets Report is a comprehensive weekly web-enabled report delivered by email on Monday. It covers grant and contract RFPs issued by every federal and state education and social services agency and every school district over the internet.

Related Tags:
Education Market

The opinions expressed in edbizbuzz are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Classroom Technology Webinar
How to Leverage Virtual Learning: Preparing Students for the Future
Hear from an expert panel how best to leverage virtual learning in your district to achieve your goals.
Content provided by Class
English-Language Learners Webinar AI and English Learners: What Teachers Need to Know
Explore the role of AI in multilingual education and its potential limitations.
Education Webinar The K-12 Leader: Data and Insights Every Marketer Needs to Know
Which topics are capturing the attention of district and school leaders? Discover how to align your content with the topics your target audience cares about most. 

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Markets New Magazine Seeks to Bring 'Civil Discourse' to Education Debate
Headed up by former Los Angeles superintendent John E. Deasy, The Line will feature a variety of viewpoints on major K-12 issues.
4 min read
The Line magazine, whose debut print issue is seen above, will present an array of viewpoints on pressing K-12 issues.
The Line magazine, whose debut print issue is seen above, will present an array of viewpoints on pressing K-12 issues.
Markets News in Brief Publishers Get Poor Marks on Common-Core Math Texts
The curriculum-review website EdReports.org has released its first round of results for high school math textbooks, and three of the major publishers performed poorly.
1 min read
Markets McGraw-Hill Education Pulls Textbook Amid Criticism Over Middle East Map
A series of maps in a comparative politics textbook purporting to show Palestinian loss of land enraged pro-Israel groups.
Leo Doran
4 min read
Markets News in Brief Amazon to Launch Website For Open Resources
Amazon Education is working on a new platform that will allow schools to upload, manage, share, and discover open education resources from a home page that in some ways resembles the one shoppers are accustomed to accessing on the massive online retailer's website.
1 min read