School Improvement in Maryland

HSA: High School Assessment Program

Online Courses for Teachers to help students prepare for HSA

Online Courses

Resources to Help Students Prepare for HSA

Teachers may want to direct students and/or their parents to the following resources available to help students prepare for HSA.

Web Resources about HSA
Preparing for HSA
Maryland High School Assessments

Motivational Resources
Cost of Living Game
Be What I Want to Be

Practice Taking the HSA

Teachers can use the mini-assessments on the public release forms to help diagnose student strengths and needs. The mini-assessments are organized by the content standards identified in the table below. Items on the mini-assessments were on previous forms of the actual assessment and have been released to the public to illustrate how content might be assessed.

The mini-assessments include a combination of selected response, student produced-response and constructed response items. Correct answers are provided for the selected response and student produced response items. Scored student responses are available for the constructed responses.

After students complete the online mini-assessments, they will receive the results of their performance online by standard, expectation, and indicator assessed. Teachers must keep in mind and communicate to students that the items of these sample assessments represent varying difficulty levels, and each item represents only one way to assess an indicator. Therefore, scoring correctly on a particular item does not necessarily indicate proficiency on the indicator assessed.

Government
Government Structure, Functions, and Principles 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Protecting Rights and Maintaining Order 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Systems of Government and U.S. Foreign Policy 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Impact of Geography on Governmental Policy 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Economic Principles, Institutions and Processes 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Biology
Skills and Processes 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Biological Molecules 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Cells and Organisms 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Inheritance of Traits 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Evolutionary Change 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Interdependence of Organisms 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
English
Writing: Composing (2.1.1) & Language Usage and Conventions 2008 2007 2006 2005  
Writing: Composing (2.1.4) & Language Usage and Conventions 2008 2007 2006 2005  
Reading and Literature A 2008 2007 2006 2005  
Reading and Literature B 2008 2007 2006 2005  
Algebra/Data Analysis
Analyzing Patterns and Functions 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Modeling Real-World Situations 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Collecting, Organizing and Analyzing Data 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Using Data to Make Predictions 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004