<p class="page-header-ui-text">The Education Commonwealth Project (ECP) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell is guided by the belief that better school quality data can help identify and respond to inequities in students’ school experiences and that real-world assessments of student learning can enable a greater diversity of students to demonstrate their proficiency. Funded by the Massachusetts State Legislature, ECP offers public school districts across the state a new approach to evaluating school quality and student learning. The School Quality Measures data dashboard and Quality Performance Assessments have already been successfully piloted by the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA), and with financial backing from Massachusetts State Legislature, they are now being made available on a free and open-source basis.
</p>
<p class="page-header-ui-text">In place of standardized tests like the MCAS, Quality Performance Assessments emphasize teacher-generated, curriculum-embedded methods to evaluate students’ deeper mastery of content and skills. And seeking to challenge and expand the existing accountability system, the School Quality Measures framework reflects the full scope of what schools do, while also collecting a broader range of data for determining school progress. </p>
<p class="page-header-ui-text">The Education Commonwealth Project is an extension of the <%= link_to "Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA)", "https://www.mciea.org/" %>. Formed in 2016 with support from the Massachusetts State Legislature, MCIEA is a partnership of eight public school districts–Attleboro, Boston, Lowell, Milford, Revere, Somerville, Wareham, Winchester–and their local teacher unions. The eight MCIEA districts have worked together since 2016, with support from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Center for Collaborative Education, to create fairer and more accurate pictures of students and schools. The consortium is co-governed by the superintendents and teachers’ union presidents in recognition of the benefits to such partnerships. </p>
<p class="page-header-ui-text">The mission of ECP is to provide districts with the opportunity to adopt the innovative assessment and accountability tools developed by MCIEA. We seek to increase knowledge among school community members about these alternative measurements, build school and district capacity for employing them, and further develop a system that might be adopted across the Commonwealth. In doing so, ECP strives to advance educational assessment that is more valid, more democratic, and more equitable than the current accountability system powered chiefly by a single set of standardized tests. Districts may choose to join MCIEA, or use one or both of the tools independently and tailored to their specific needs.
ECP will partner with any Massachusetts public school district, provided that administrators, educators, and community members are meaningfully engaged. Working with ECP can be as simple as having a conversation with our team about assessment. But we also offer the following full range of resources on a free and open-source basis:
</p>
<ul class="list-group">
<li class="list-group-item">Field-tested student and educator perception surveys and support for using those surveys</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Field-tested performance assessments for classroom use, and support for their adoption</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Support for building a school quality framework or adapting the School Quality Measures framework</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Support for building school-wide performance tasks to assess student learning</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Leveraging existing administrative data in new ways</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Developing team-oriented “walkthroughs” as measures of school performance and use of curriculum-embedded performance assessments</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Protocols for data use in PLCs or other school improvement efforts, as well as for the creation and administration of high quality performance assessments and reliable scoring of student work</li>
<li class="list-group-item">A state-of-the-art data dashboard that can be customized for school or district needs</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Engagement with families and community members around school quality and performance assessment</li>
<p>Education Commonwealth Project: The Education Commonwealth Project (ECP) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell is guided by the belief that assessment should be a tool, not a weapon, and exists for the purpose of empowering educators and community members to strengthen and support their schools. Funded by the Massachusetts State Legislature, ECP offers public school districts across the state a new approach to assessing school quality and student learning. ECP’s two strands of work—School Quality Measures and Quality Performance Assessments—spring from five years of field-testing within the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA). Because ECP is a publicly-funded project, our tools and technical support are available on a free and open-source basis for public schools and districts seeking to develop alternative approaches to measurement and accountability.</p>
<p>The Education Commonwealth Project is an extension of the <%= link_to "Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA)", "https://www.mciea.org/" %>. Formed in 2016 with support from the Massachusetts State Legislature, MCIEA is a partnership of eight public school districts–Attleboro, Boston, Lowell, Milford, Revere, Somerville, Wareham, and Winchester–and their local teacher unions. The eight MCIEA districts have worked together since 2016, with support from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Center for Collaborative Education, to create fairer and more accurate pictures of student learning and school quality. The consortium is co-governed by district superintendents and teachers’ union presidents, in recognition of the benefits to such partnerships.</p>
<p>The mission of ECP is to provide Massachusetts school districts with the opportunity to adopt and adapt the innovative assessment tools developed within MCIEA. We seek to increase knowledge among school community members about these alternative measurements, build school and district capacity for employing them, and further develop a system that might be adopted across the Commonwealth. In doing so, ECP strives to advance educational assessment that is more valid, democratic, and equitable than the current accountability system powered chiefly by a single set of standardized tests. Districts may partner with ECP to focus on SQM, QPA, or both. They can also use partnership with ECP as an on-ramp to joining MCIEA. Whatever the case, ECP encourages schools and districts to pursue their specific needs in whatever way makes sense to them.</p>
<p>ECP will partner with any Massachusetts public school district, provided that administrators, educators, and community members are meaningfully engaged. Working with ECP can be as simple as having a conversation with our team about assessment. But we also offer the following full range of resources on a free and open-source basis:</p>
<ul class="list-group">
<li class="list-group-item">Field-tested student and educator perception surveys, and support for using those surveys</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Field-tested performance assessments for classroom use, and support for their adoption</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Support for building a school quality framework or adapting the ECP School Quality Measures framework</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Support for creating school-wide performance tasks to assess student learning</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Leveraging existing administrative data in new ways</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Developing team-oriented “walkthroughs” as measures of school performance</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Protocols for data use in PLCs or other school improvement efforts, as well as for the creation and administration of high quality performance assessments</li>
<li class="list-group-item">A state-of-the-art data dashboard that can be customized for school or district needs</li>
<li class="list-group-item"> Engagement with families and community members around the assessment of school quality and student learning </li>
<p>The Education Commonwealth Project (ECP) works to support assessments of student learning and school
progress that are more valid, democratic, and holistic than traditional test-based school measurement.
ECP offers free and open-source resources for public schools and districts seeking to develop alternative
approaches to measurement and accountability.</p>
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<p>The Education Commonwealth Project (ECP) works to support assessment of student learning and school progress that is valid, democratic, and equitable. Pushing back against the overreliance on standardized testing, ECP offers free and open-source resources for public schools and districts in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>SQM honors the full range of what schools do, using data to support and sustain schools rather than to rate and rank them. Whether it means identifying new indicators for tracking progress, or visualizing data in ways that foster richer conversations, the SQM team is here to support Massachusetts districts as they work to assemble a fuller and more accurate portrait of their schools. </p>
<p>The Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) project moves beyond testing a narrow range of knowledge in
one moment of time to rethink how we assess student learning. By providing examples of high quality
performance assessments, a toolkit of protocols, and guidance, the QPA team seeks to provide a model
for reimagining state assessment in Massachusetts and beyond. </p>
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<p>QPA offers a clearer picture of what students know and can do, assessing learning through the use of meaningful projects designed by educators. By providing examples of high quality performance assessments, a toolkit of protocols, and guidance, the QPA team seeks to provide a model for reimagining state assessment in Massachusetts and beyond. </p>
<h1 class="page-header-ui-title mb-3 mt-5">What is QPA?</h1>
<p>The Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) project moves beyond testing a narrow range of knowledge in one moment of time to rethink how we assess student learning. Through creating teacher-generated, standards-based, curriculum-embedded, and equity-minded performance assessments, a greater diversity of students are able to demonstrate what they know and a wider range of knowledge and skills can be assessed. By providing examples of high quality performance assessments, a toolkit of protocols, and guidance, the QPA team seeks to provide a model for reimagining state assessment in Massachusetts and beyond. </p>
<p>Over the past twenty years, MCAS, the statewide assessment in Massachusetts, has done little to close persistent score disparities by race, income, language, and disability. Additionally, MCAS has had significant negative impacts by narrowing the curriculum and losing valuable learning time to low-quality test preparation, particularly in school districts with high percentages of students from historically marginalized groups. The use of standardized tests within rigid accountability systems has led to increased inequality in schools, as these measures are consistently correlated with socioeconomic factors and race..</p>
<h1 class="mt-5"> QPA is designed to address these shortcomings by: </h1>
<h2>Focusing on what is most important for students to learn </h2>
<p>Assessments should test what is most important. Performance tasks provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in multiple ways. High-quality, authentic performance tasks are rich assessment experiences that engage students in meaningful writing, oral presentations, synthesis, analysis, reasoning, problem solving, collaborative teamwork. QPAs are better suited than traditional standardized tests for preparing students to tackle the kinds of tasks they will encounter in college, the workplace, and as citizens. </p>
<h2>Embedding assessment in the learning process </h2>
<p>Performance tasks are the culmination of curriculum units that enable students to demonstrate what they know and can do. They are an extension of learning as students apply their acquired knowledge and skills in a real-world setting.</p>
<h2>Enabling a greater diversity of students to demonstrate what they know, fostering anti-racism proficiency</h2>
<p>With the increasing diversity of students in our public schools, well designed performance assessments provide opportunities to showcase the knowledge and skills of historically marginalized groups and cultivate skills for all students such as critical consciousness and anti-racism. </p>
<h2>Giving teachers and parents a more timely and complete portrayal of student learning</h2>
<p>Performance tasks provide rich information to facilitate immediate feedback on what a student knows and can do. This data enables teachers to address learning gaps in more timely ways. A portfolio of student work derived from performance assessments within and across academic years provides an in-depth view of how student learning is progressing over time and how knowledge is building towards proficiency of content standards and skills. </p>
<h1 class="mt-5">What QPA Resources Do We Provide? </h1>
<ul class="list-group">
<li class="list-group-item">Information about and access to the MCIEA Performance Assessment Task Bank</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Tools and protocols that can be used to design high quality performance tasks</li>
<li class="list-group-item">Research and briefs on performance assessment</li>
</ul>
<p>
<a class="text-decoration-none" href="#!">
Read More About MCIEA’s Free Performance Assessment Task Bank
<p>The Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) project moves beyond testing a narrow range of knowledge in one moment of time to rethink how we assess student learning. Through creating teacher-generated, standards-based, curriculum-embedded, and equity-minded performance assessments, a greater diversity of students are able to demonstrate what they know and a wider range of knowledge and skills can be assessed. By providing examples of high quality performance assessments, a toolkit of protocols, and guidance, the QPA team seeks to provide a model for reimagining state assessment in Massachusetts and beyond. </p>
<p>Over the past twenty years, MCAS, the statewide assessment in Massachusetts, has done little to close persistent score disparities by race, income, language, and disability. Additionally, MCAS has had significant negative impacts by narrowing the curriculum and losing valuable learning time to low-quality test preparation, particularly in school districts with high percentages of students from historically marginalized groups. The use of standardized tests within rigid accountability systems has led to increased inequality in schools, as these measures are consistently correlated with socioeconomic factors and race..</p>
<h3 class="fs-5">Focusing on what is most important for students to learn</h3>
<p>Assessments should test what is most important. Performance tasks provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in multiple ways. High-quality, authentic performance tasks are rich assessment experiences that engage students in meaningful writing, oral presentations, synthesis, analysis, reasoning, problem solving, and collaborative teamwork. QPAs are better suited than traditional standardized tests for preparing students to tackle the kinds of tasks they will encounter in college, the workplace, and as citizens. </p>
<h3 class="fs-5">Embedding assessment in the learning process</h3>
<p>Performance tasks are the culmination of curriculum units that enable students to demonstrate what they know and can do. They are an extension of learning as students apply their acquired knowledge and skills in a real-world setting.</p>
<h3 class="fs-5">Enabling a greater diversity of students to demonstrate what they know, fostering anti-racism proficiency</h3>
<p>With the increasing diversity of students in our public schools, well designed performance assessments provide opportunities to showcase the knowledge and skills of historically marginalized groups and cultivate skills for all students such as critical consciousness and anti-racism.</p>
<h3 class="fs-5">Giving teachers and parents a more timely and complete portrayal of student learning</h3>
<p>Performance tasks provide rich information to facilitate immediate feedback on what a student knows and can do. This data enables teachers to address learning gaps in more timely ways. A portfolio of student work derived from performance assessments within and across academic years provides an in-depth view of how student learning is progressing over time and how knowledge is building towards proficiency of content standards and skills.</p>
<h1 class="page-header-ui-title mb-3 mt-5">What is SQM?</h1>
<p> The School Quality Measures project (SQM) moves beyond test scores to reimagine how we understand and measure school quality. By drawing on a broad set of measures that includes social-emotional indicators, school culture indicators, and opportunity-to-learn indicators, SQM offers communities tools and practices that better reflect the full range of what schools do. From implementing new data sources, like student and teacher surveys, to visualizing data in new ways that go beyond ranking and rating, the SQM team is here to support Massachusetts districts as they work to assemble a fuller and more accurate portrait of their schools.</p>
<p>Traditional measurement and accountability systems, which rely heavily on standardized tests, have been plagued by a host of unintended consequences like teaching-to-the-test and the narrowing of educational aims. Moreover, such systems have been largely ineffective at advancing equity and supporting the work of school improvement. </p>
<h1 class="mt-5">SQM is designed to address these shortcomings by:</h1>
<h2>Aligning assessment with public values</h2>
<p>The SQM approach includes a wide range of indicators aligned with the domains of school quality that Americans value and that research supports. By assessing the many things that schools do, the SQM system seeks to honor and sustain the full mission of public schools. </p>
<h2>Drawing on multiple measures of school quality </h2>
<p>SQM includes 34 indicators of school quality, seeking to paint a more accurate and valid picture of school performance. By using multiple measures SQM moves beyond the narrow and overly simplistic notion of “good” and “bad” schools that drives inequity and dominates the contemporary education policy debate.</p>
<h2>Breaking the link between school measurement and social inequity</h2>
<p>Research shows that test scores are closely linked to demographics, such as student race and socio-economic status. To rely on test scores as the primary measures of school quality, then, is to reinforce existing inequities. SQM seeks to break the relationship between school quality measurement and educational inequity by offering a system of measurement that is not skewed by racial bias. </p>
<h2>Embracing human decision making </h2>
<p>SQM encourages inclusive, democratic deliberation and is rooted in the belief that educators and community members should be empowered to make meaningful decisions about their schools. Rather than rating and ranking schools like traditional accountability systems, SQM visualizes school quality data on a publicly accessible dashboard and ECP staff support school communities in sense-making of data. </p>
<h1 class="mt-5">What SQM Resources Do We Provide?</h1>
<p>
<a class="text-decoration-none" href="#!">
Read more about SQM's Free-and-Open SQM Data Dashboard here
SQM moves beyond test scores to reimagine how we understand and measure school quality. By drawing on a broad set of indicators that reflect school culture, student opportunity to learn, and social-emotional outcomes, SQM reflects the full range of what schools do. Just as importantly, SQM offers tools and practices designed to foster deeper understandings of school performance. Rather than offering summative evaluations of schools, SQM promotes inquiry and reflection about areas of strength and areas for growth.
Traditional measurement and accountability systems, which rely chiefly on standardized tests, have been plagued by a host of unintended consequences like teaching-to-the-test and the narrowing of educational aims. Moreover, such systems have been largely ineffective at advancing equity and supporting the work of school improvement. By offering a fuller picture of schools, and by creating opportunities to better understand school performance, SQM takes a whole new approach to data use.
<h3 class="fs-5">Aligning assessment with public values</h3>
<p>The SQM approach includes a wide range of indicators aligned with the domains of school quality that Americans value and that research supports. By assessing the many things that schools do, the SQM system seeks to honor and sustain the full mission of public schools.</p>
<h3 class="fs-5">Drawing on multiple measures of school quality </h3>
<p>SQM includes 34 indicators of school quality, seeking to paint a more accurate and valid picture of school performance. By using multiple measures, SQM moves beyond the narrow and overly simplistic notion of “good” and “bad” schools that shapes public opinion and public policy. </p>
<h3 class="fs-5">Breaking the link between school measurement and social inequity</h3>
<p>As research illustrates, student standardized test scores often indicate far more about out-of-school variables like family income than they do anything about actual school performance. As a result, schools serving marginalized and minoritized students are frequently misclassified as “bad” schools. SQM seeks to break the relationship between school quality measurement and social inequality by offering an approach to assessment that does not simply reflect demography. </p>
<h3 class="fs-5">Embracing human decision making </h3>
<p>SQM encourages inclusive, democratic deliberation and is rooted in the belief that educators and community members should be empowered to make meaningful decisions about their schools. In addition to support for assembling a clearer portrait of school performance, SQM also works with educators and community members to make sense of data.</p>
<h3 class="fs-4">Project Associate, School Quality Measures</h3>
<p class="mb-0">Ashley Carey is a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a former Lawrence High School art teacher. She joins ECP with practical and research experience related to school measurement and accountability. During her time at MCIEA, Ashley worked with teachers, school leaders, and district administrators, to help build their capacity for engaging with and understanding a broad range of data. As an affiliate of the Beyond Test Scores Project, she collaborates on research projects that examine the role of educational accountability, including its relationship to racial and socioeconomic inequality. Ashley also works as an adjunct instructor at Merrimack College, where she teaches in the department of Human Development & Community Engagement. </p>
<p class="mb-0">Dan French co-leads performance assessment work within ECP. He was formerly executive director of Center for Collaborative Education, a nonprofit dedicated to assist public school districts to create equity-minded schools that provide quality education to every student. In this role, he co-founded the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment, a model of assessing school quality and student learning that can serve as an alternative to the current biased MA education accountability system. Prior, Dan was director of curriculum & instruction at Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, before leaving in protest of the agency’s move toward a single, high stakes standardized graduation test. He started his education career as a teacher of students with special needs. Dan received his doctorate from UMass Amherst.</p>
<p class="mb-0"> Akira Harper works on the Engagement Team in the Education Commonwealth Project. She is a Ph.D. candidate, an NSF Fellow, and is earning her degree in STEM Education and Teacher Development at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She specializes in (non-traditional) assessment, curriculum development and implementation, working with STEM teachers, and humanizing communities that have been underserved or marginalized. She is deeply committed to transforming educational spaces, that have been structurally designed to reaffirm inequitable ideologies or policies, through racially-just and equity-oriented work. </p>
<p class="mb-0">Nelson Jovel has previously worked as a teacher for <%= link_to "Summerbridge", "https://www.breakthroughcollaborative.org/" %>; a summer school program for under-resourced students. He also worked at Woodside Priory School assisting students residing at the school through the boarding program. Nelson Jovel is the lead developer of the <%= link_to "School Quality Measures Dashboard", "https://mciea-dashboard.herokuapp.com/welcome" %> for MCIEA. He is also the developer on the project to customize the School Quality Measures Dashboard for the district of Lowell.</p>
<p class="mb-0">Dr. Susan Lyons is the owner and Principal Consultant at <%= link_to "Lyons Assessment Consulting", "https://www.lyonsassessmentconsulting.com/" %>. Her firm is a leader in supporting innovation in educational assessment and school accountability, working closely with clients across the country to transform traditional assessment systems to better serve all students. Dr. Lyons began her career in the classroom as a seventh-grade math teacher in Quito, Ecuador. In addition to her consulting work, Dr. Lyons is a part-time faculty member at Boston College and is the Executive Director of a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing gender and racial equity in the field of educational measurement, <%= link_to "Women in Measurement", "https://womeninmeasurement.org/" %>.</p>
<h3 class="fs-4">Director of School Quality Measures</h3>
<p class="mb-0">Peter Piazza is the Director of the School Quality Measures project at the Education Commonwealth Project. He formerly led school quality measure work at the Massachusetts’ Consortium for Innovative Educational Assessment, a coalition of public K-12 districts piloting a non-test-based form of school quality measurement. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Penn State’s Center for Education and Civil Rights, and he writes about race and school integration at the School Diversity Notebook blog, an affiliate of the National Coalition on School Diversity. Peter is also an adjunct instructor in the Leadership in Schooling Ed.D. program at the University of Massachusetts - Lowell. He earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College in 2015. </p>
<h3 class="fs-4">Director, School Quality Measures</h3>
<p class="mb-0">Peter Piazza is the Director of the School Quality Measures project at the Education Commonwealth Project. He formerly led school quality measure work at the Massachusetts’ Consortium for Innovative Educational Assessment, a coalition of public K-12 districts piloting a non-test-based form of school quality measurement. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Penn State’s Center for Education and Civil Rights, and he writes about race and school integration at the <%= link_to "School Diversity Notebook", "https://sdnotebook.com/" %> blog, an affiliate of the National Coalition on School Diversity. Peter is also an adjunct instructor in the Leadership in Schooling Ed.D. program at the University of Massachusetts - Lowell. He earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College in 2015. He lives in Malden, MA, where his daughter is a student in the public schools.</p>
<p class="mb-0">Jack Schneider is the Executive Director of the Education Commonwealth Project and an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. A nationally-recognized expert in educational measurement and accountability, Jack has worked for over a decade to support public schools and districts in Massachusetts. He is a co-founder of the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment, co-directs a research-practice partnership with the Lowell Public Schools, and is a winner of the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s “Friend of Education” Award. A former classroom teacher, Jack lives in Somerville, MA, where his daughter is a student in the public schools. </p>
<p class="mb-0">Julie Spencer-Robinson is Director of Engagement at the Education Commonwealth Project. She recently earned her Ph.D. in Educational Policy, Research, and Administration from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Julie worked for 25 years as a public middle and high school teacher, and was also president of the Northampton Association of School Employees. She currently serves as an elected trustee of Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, as a board member of the Collaborative for Educational Services, and on the Vocational Technical Education Advisory Council to the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.</p>
rebuilt
3 years ago