Michigan Assessment Consortium and MZ Development launch field test of MI-CSS, powered by OSCAR Classroom, to provide collaborative scoring platform for Michigan’s Model Arts Education Instruction and Assessment Project
Michigan Assessment Consortium will work with MZ Development to field test a platform for a collaborative teacher scoring system for MAEIA.
Mason, MI – Between January and June 2019, the Michigan Assessment Consortium (MAC) and MZ Development—an educational technology organization—will field test a customized solution for the Michigan Arts Education Instruction and Assessment Project (MAEIA). The platform, Michigan Collaborative Scoring System (Mi-CSS), powered by OSCAR Classroom, is intended to provide a system for teachers to collaboratively view and score student responses to common assessments designed to foster professional learning opportunities in performance assessments and student scoring.
MI–CSS, powered by OSCAR Classroom, is based on a common set of assessments that measure state content standards — initially in the arts, and then in other disciplines. The system will offer a variety of scoring resources to teachers (e.g., assessment administration manuals, video recording tips, and student sampling strategies), permitting them to readily upload student work (PDFs of print files, digital images, audio files, and video files) into the cloud-based MI-CSS system, score each student on each dimension of the Teacher Scoring Rubrics, and then post the work for another colleague to score. If the teacher and colleague differ on any dimension in the scoring rubric, the work will be sent to a third (resolution) scorer to resolve the differences. Finally, the teacher will receive a student score summary report that indicates the scores that the teacher, the second teacher, and where necessary, the resolution scorer gave to the work of each student.
The MAC was seeking a solution that delivered on the following criteria:
- Provide additional opportunities for teachers to play an active role in the assessment process
- Create a scalable solution that can be used in different assessment programs
- Allow for the opportunity to optimize, improve and innovate processes
- Provide a technically-sound, low-cost means for teachers to obtain feedback of the work of their
MZ Development and the MAC are proud to be working together and share a mission to deliver a first- in-class collaborative performance scoring platform intended to provide a tool for teachers to become more skillful assessors of students in their classrooms and demonstrate educator effectiveness to address local and state teacher evaluation requirements and better address common standards for what constitutes good student performance.
“The development of this teacher-friendly assessment scoring system software should help states and local districts use high quality, instructionally-related performance assessments at relatively low cost,” Dr. Edward Roeber, Program Manager for the MAC said. “MI-CSS may significantly improve the quality of assessments used, and provide them the data they can use to better demonstrate their effectiveness.”
The first release of MI-CSS platform is scheduled to be made available February 1, 2019 to MAEIA team leads and field testers. Broader adoption and use in other subject areas are expected to follow that will extend beyond just the use for MAEIA.
We couldn’t be happier to have been selected to work with the Michigan Assessment Consortium on this project,” said Jeffrey Cuff, Chief Operations Officer for MZ Development. “It’s a natural evolution of our efforts to streamline performance assessment scoring using OSCAR, our next generation online scoring and reporting platform. This new platform will be ideally suited to address the needs of teachers who require robust performance scoring capabilities in their classroom with the added benefit of providing collaborative scoring of the same work by other qualified teachers. It’s an extraordinary tool for scoring efficiency and professional learning.”
About Michigan Assessment Consortium
The Michigan Assessment Consortium (MAC) is a non-profit (501(c)3) professional association of educators who believe quality education depends on accurate, balanced, and meaningful assessment. MAC members work to advance assessment literacy and advocate for assessment education and excellence. The mission of the MAC is to improve student learning and achievement through a system of coherent curriculum, balanced assessment, and effective instruction. The MAC does this by collaboratively:
- Promoting assessment knowledge and
- Providing professional
- Producing and sharing assessment tools and
MAC members:
- Are individuals and organizations interested in quality assessment practices
- Work in public and private schools, local and regional districts, government agencies, professional associations, and institutes of higher learning
- Embrace high standards of excellence
- Understand that quality assessment is key to quality learning and student achievement
- Value professional learning and continuous improvement
For more information on the MAC, visit: www.michiganassessmentconsortium.org
About the MAEIA Assessment Program
The Michigan Arts Education Instruction and Assessment (MAEIA) program was developed by the MAC for the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to support Michigan school districts, buildings, educators, and the public in implementing a high-quality arts education program in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts for all K-12 students.
MAEIA is the first statewide project to compile a comprehensive, one-stop-shop of tools and resources that can help K-12 districts with:
- Program review and goal setting
- District and building improvement
- Student assessment
- Demonstrating educator effectiveness
- Professional learning in the arts
For more information on the MAEIA project, visit: https://maeia-artsednetwork.org
About MZ Development
MZ Development is a dynamic and flexible organization focused on a single mission: to build products that deliver the most efficient and accurate solutions for performance assessments. We enable our clients by providing cutting-edge technology to make performance a simple experience, with rich results, in a more efficient ways than ever before.
MZ Development product suite includes:
- OSCAR, a state-of-the-art, next-generation platform for online scoring and reporting that boasts a set of features to accommodate a variety of performance scoring requirements, while still achieving the primary goal of providing an accurate, simple, affordable
- OSCAR Classroom, a teacher-based, collaborative scoring platform introduced to accommodate the needs of Michigan’s Model Arts Education Instruction and Assessment Project (MAEIA) and intended for broader adoption and use in other subject areas beyond
- ADAM, our assessment delivery and management platform intended to make online assessment easier to administer without sacrificing sophisticated item authoring, assessment administration and comprehensive reporting
For more information on MZ Development, visit: www.mzdevinc.com
