MCAP is being redesigned AGAIN

[Anonymous]

I missed this news from January:

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MDMSDE/bulletins/40689ba

MSDE is hiring a new vendor to redesign the MCAP again (new tests in 2026-2027), and has some ChatGPT babbleslop to justify it:

“We are strengthening the value of the assessment program for Maryland students,” said Dr. Carey M. Wright, State Superintendent of Schools. “This opportunity to thoughtfully redesign our assessment program with community input allows Maryland to better measure student performance and academic growth.”


* Improve technical quality and validity by adopting assessments that meet current psychometric standards, including the transition to multi-stage adaptive testing to better measure student performance across the full range of achievement.

* Increase equity and accessibility through enhanced accommodation delivery, ensuring more consistent, timely, and appropriate access for students with disabilities and multilingual learners.

* Enhance instructional usefulness by incorporating an optional interim assessment program that provides educators with actionable data to inform instruction throughout the school year.

* Expand and strengthen assessment content by augmenting the existing MSDE item bank to ensure an adequate number of questions at all difficulty levels, allowing for greater flexibility and an increased number of released items.

* Improve efficiency and coherence by consolidating multiple vendors into an integrated assessment platform, reducing complexity and improving system alignment.

[Anonymous]

Yay. More teaching to the test 🙄

[Anonymous]

Adaptive testing is now becoming the gold standard. It's great. I support the changes if it means MCAP becomes adaptive.

[Anonymous]

I agree with PP. This sounds good. Adaptive testing is more appropiate and can help pinpoint a student's real level.

[Anonymous]

It was always half-baked. They need to just use a standard national test that doesn't require years of debugging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adaptive testing is now becoming the gold standard. It's great. I support the changes if it means MCAP becomes adaptive.

An adaptive test *after the course is over* is not helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was always half-baked. They need to just use a standard national test that doesn't require years of debugging.

Maryland sucks at education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was always half-baked. They need to just use a standard national test that doesn't require years of debugging.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was always half-baked. They need to just use a standard national test that doesn't require years of debugging.

+1

Take a look at the distribution of 1-4. Only like 5 percent of students in my kids’ grade were getting 1s and 4s in the report last year. How is it helpful info if everyone is getting 2s and 3s.

Maryland/MCPS could stop wasting money trying to reinvent the wheel each year and just buy something .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adaptive testing is now becoming the gold standard. It's great. I support the changes if it means MCAP becomes adaptive.

An adaptive test *after the course is over* is not helpful.

What sort of nonsense is this? You want to give tests BEFORE kids start learning about the topic?

Adaptive tests extend the range of differentiation, PP. All too often, particularly for American tests, assessments are specifically constructed to address the middle-achievers. They usually end up lumping all the poor scorers into one group, without differentiating those who answered entirely at random and those who remembered a little bit of their class and scored slightly better than that, which is really unhelpful when trying to adjust accommodations for students with specific learning needs. And they end up lumping all the top scorers into one group, even though education among the high achievers has become ever more competitive and there is a real need to identify the truly excellent kids for secondary and higher education levels: we must differentiate between the students who have a solid grasp of the topic, and those who have exceptional mastery.

So adaptive tests tell us a lot more about ALL the students, instead of just focusing on the middle range.

[Anonymous]

MCAP takes up so many instructional days. 2 days each for Math, English, Social Studies...for a worthless exam whose results come 6-12 months later that MCPS doesn't use for anything.

All the decisions for CES, magnets etc. are made using the MAP test scores. MCAP is worthless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCAP takes up so many instructional days. 2 days each for Math, English, Social Studies...for a worthless exam whose results come 6-12 months later that MCPS doesn't use for anything.

All the decisions for CES, magnets etc. are made using the MAP test scores. MCAP is worthless.

Except now MCAP is supposed to be one of the four items (with CogAT, MAP-M & Curricular Assessments) used for determining Math acceleration, possibly the only one used for course advancement (grade skipping in a subject relying on scoring 4 on MCAP for the grade to be skipped), and the only measure on which the system's success in this field will be judged. How they are going to utilize it effectively for those with its timing and the months-long reporting lag is a mystery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCAP takes up so many instructional days. 2 days each for Math, English, Social Studies...for a worthless exam whose results come 6-12 months later that MCPS doesn't use for anything.

All the decisions for CES, magnets etc. are made using the MAP test scores. MCAP is worthless.

Except now MCAP is supposed to be one of the four items (with CogAT, MAP-M & Curricular Assessments) used for determining Math acceleration, possibly the only one used for course advancement (grade skipping in a subject relying on scoring 4 on MCAP for the grade to be skipped), and the only measure on which the system's success in this field will be judged. How they are going to utilize it effectively for those with its timing and the months-long reporting lag is a mystery.

This is MCPS's plan to get students to take MCAP more seriously so they do better on the state report cards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCAP takes up so many instructional days. 2 days each for Math, English, Social Studies...for a worthless exam whose results come 6-12 months later that MCPS doesn't use for anything.

All the decisions for CES, magnets etc. are made using the MAP test scores. MCAP is worthless.

Except now MCAP is supposed to be one of the four items (with CogAT, MAP-M & Curricular Assessments) used for determining Math acceleration, possibly the only one used for course advancement (grade skipping in a subject relying on scoring 4 on MCAP for the grade to be skipped), and the only measure on which the system's success in this field will be judged. How they are going to utilize it effectively for those with its timing and the months-long reporting lag is a mystery.

The MCAP distributions are crazy. In my kids' grade reports, less than 5% are getting a 4 in some subjects. So if getting a 4 is the determinant for getting accelerated math, problem solved--very few will have 4s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCAP takes up so many instructional days. 2 days each for Math, English, Social Studies...for a worthless exam whose results come 6-12 months later that MCPS doesn't use for anything.

All the decisions for CES, magnets etc. are made using the MAP test scores. MCAP is worthless.

Except now MCAP is supposed to be one of the four items (with CogAT, MAP-M & Curricular Assessments) used for determining Math acceleration, possibly the only one used for course advancement (grade skipping in a subject relying on scoring 4 on MCAP for the grade to be skipped), and the only measure on which the system's success in this field will be judged. How they are going to utilize it effectively for those with its timing and the months-long reporting lag is a mystery.

The MCAP distributions are crazy. In my kids' grade reports, less than 5% are getting a 4 in some subjects. So if getting a 4 is the determinant for getting accelerated math, problem solved--very few will have 4s.

They said showing mastery by getting a 4 might lead to course advancement (grade skipping for a subject), but unless they are going to administer the prior year's test for the following grade at the beginning of the next academic year, it is unclear how they will know that, e.g., a rising 4th grade student scored a 4 on the 4th grade MCAP (which normally wouldn't be taken until the following spring) and should be moved to 5th grade Math instead of taking the 4th grade Math they already know.

That's different from being identified for the new elementary grade-level "Math with Acceleration" (vs. grade-level Math without the "Acceleration" moniker), which some combination of MCAP and the other three (hopefully with some sliding heuristic -- but I'm not holding my breath) would do. What that "with Acceleration" really means also is a bit of a mystery.