Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment MCIEA
The Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA) is a partnership of eight MA public school districts and their local teacher unions, joined together to create a fair and effective accountability system that offers a more dynamic picture of student learning and school quality than a single standardized test. MCIEA seeks to increase achievement for all students, close prevailing opportunity gaps among subgroups, and prepare a diversity of students for college, career, and life.
Education Commonwealth Project (ECP)
The mission of the Education Commonwealth Project is to disseminate MCIEA’s alternative assessment tools to public schools and districts throughout Massachusetts. ECP also seeks to foster state-level change in assessment and accountability.
Performance Assessments
Students demonstrate what they know and can do through real-world application, using teacher-generated, curriculum embedded performance assessments for a richer means of determining student achievement. MCIEA maintains a Task Bank as a public online resource with over 150 performance based tasks created by MCIEA educators and aligned with Massachusetts curriculum standards. Teams of MCIEA teachers are trained to design, validate, and implement high quality performance assessments and reliably score resulting student work.
School Quality Measures
MCIEA districts utilize a holistic assessment framework with multiple components to create a fairer, more comprehensive picture of school performance. The framework was developed with input from MCIEA stakeholders and its dashboard combines student and teacher survey data with administrative data. MCIEA districts annually administer surveys to students and teachers, and collect a wide range of school administrative data; they use the SQM dashboard to inform school improvement strategies and district resource allocation. The SQM data dashboards for all MCIEA districts have been made public.