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HSA: High School Assessment Program
How are test items developed and scored?
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.
- Evolution of an Item
- Science
- Language Arts
- Mathematics
- Social Studies
Scoring the High School Assessments
The High School Assessment Public Release Forms are released by MSDE each year in the fall to provide examples of how students will be assessed in each subject. Among the items released are brief and extended constructed responses. For each constructed response item released, MSDE has also provided student responses that were scored and annotations explaining why each response received that score. In addition to the anchor papers (those student responses that were selected to represent each rubric score for scoring purposes, MSDE also released an additional set of student responses that can be used by teachers to practice scoring. These papers are also annotated so that after teachers score the response, they can see the official score and an explanation of why the student response received that score. The grid below links to the available, annotated student responses.
A Scoring Tutor provides an audio/visual explanation of the rubric and anchor papers used to score the constructed responses.
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