Were those MSAs really shorter?
We received a response from the Maryland State Department of Education concerning the post last week about the length of the Maryland School Assessments now underway.
Yes, those teachers who thought the tests were shorter were right. The reading MSA was slighly shorter than last year by about six to nine minutes, depending on the grade being tested. The state department's spokesman, William Reinhard, said that's because officials did not need to "field test" as many items as last year. Every year the state adds questions that won't be counted in the result to see if they work. If they do, the questions will be used on subsequent tests.
So what was the difference? For third graders, the first day of testing was about five minutes shorter and the second day was four minutes shorter.
There was no change in the length of the math sections.
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Comments
MSAs were DEFINETLY not shorter today. My kids were about to explode with frustration.
Posted by: D | March 24, 2009 3:34 PM
The frustration come from the first day of math testing being almost twice as much testing as the second day. The math test today was only about 50 minutes. Also, students get frustrated when they hit one of those"field test" questions which are obvious because they are above the assessment limit or from the next year's objectives. Also, the reading test for our 7th graders ended with 3 straight bcrs.
Posted by: mike | March 25, 2009 1:25 PM