School Improvement in Maryland

About MSA for Reading

Grades 3 through 8
GENERAL INFORMATION
  • Testing will occur over two days.
    • Testing window: Mid March to late March
    • Make up window: The first four school days immediately following the testing window
    • Testing will take approximately 90 minutes per day which does not include breaks. Each testing session will be broken into smaller time blocks.
  • Students will work independently during the entire testing period. Discussions or group work will not be part of the assessment.
    • Accommodations will be consistent with a student's IEP, 504 plan, or LEP plan.
  • The test consists of Norm-Referenced items and Augmented items. The Norm-Referenced items are from Stanford 10. The Augmented items are written to the Maryland Content Standards.
ITEM TYPES
  • All grades will have selected response items (SR) and brief constructed response items (BCR).
    • Selected Response Items. These items will offer four answer choices.
    • Brief Constructed Response Items. These items require students to write an answer consisting of a few sentences. Maryland has its own rubric for scoring the brief constructed response (BCR) items.
      • 0-3 scale rubric is used for scoring the brief constructed response (BCR) items.
      • The BCR rubrics with student papers illustrating levels of responses are available on the web at mdk12.org.

Last Updated: May 2006

Gary Heath