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.
+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 that all schools can use. And thanks to support from the Massachusetts State Legislature, ECP offers additional support for public schools and districts in Massachusetts.
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.
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.
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.
+Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) moves beyond testing a narrow range of knowledge in one moment of time to rethink how we assess student learning. Performance assessments are teacher-generated, standards-based, and curriculum-embedded, and they allow students to more equitably demonstrate what they know and can do. By providing examples of high quality performance assessments, a toolkit of protocols, and expert guidance, the QPA team seeks to provide a model for reimagining state assessment in Massachusetts and beyond.
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..
+Over the past twenty years, standardized tests have done little to close persistent score disparities by race, income, language, and disability. Additionally, they have often resulted in narrowing of the curriculum and loss of valuable learning time to low-quality test preparation, particularly in school districts with high percentages of students from historically marginalized groups. Performance assessments, by contrast, minimize these unintended consequences by embedding authentic assessments in ordinary classroom practice, and creating more ways for students to demonstrate knowledge and skills.
There are unlimited ways to engage with ECP! Here are some possibilities:
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+Work with ECP
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