The Measurement of Student Progress (MSP), formerly the WASL, is a state standardized test. This summative assessment is delivered to schools and proctored to students each spring. The MSP assesses students from 3rd through 10th grade. Academic areas assessed are mathematics, reading, writing, and science. Math and reading are assessed each year, while writing is assessed in 4th, 7th and 10th grade. Scientific procedures and content knowledge is measured in 5th and 8th grades.
The questions for math and reading consist of multiple choice, short answer, and extended-response (at least a paragraph). Typical extended response questions in math ask students to explain how they got their answer, students then describe their process. Extended response questions in reading are both inferential and literal; whereas, students explain their opinions using evidence from the passage. With literal questions students cite specific details from the text. The elementary writing portion of the test comes in the form of a narrative and expository prompt, middle and high schools measure persuasive and expository. The science MSP measures students’ content knowledge in specific areas. For example fifth graders must understand simple forms of energy, how energy is transformed, and examples of energy transformation in “real life”. In addition, students are expected to know the scientific investigation, i.e. investigative question, prediction, procedure, and conclusion. These students need to be able to conduct, analyze, interpret, and write a conclusion to an investigation.
In short, the MSP measures students’ understanding of the four core curricular areas. The assessment takes one to two weeks to administer. Students typically take one portion of the test per day, i.e. reading on Tuesday, math on Wednesday. Teachers are not given test booklets until the day of the test. Once a test has been administered, it is then immediately given to the school’s office staff and then “locked up”. Scores for all of the tests are returned to school administrators in August and staff members are notified of their students’ scores, just prior to the beginning of the school year or immediately following. MSP scores are released to the press and posted in the newspaper. Individual students and teacher’s scores are not specified in the press release. However, grade level percentages for that particular school are posted, for example, Daniel Bagley Fourth Grade, Reading 88%. The 88% refers to the amount of students passing the test.
As staff members analyze the data and looked to find patterns of deficiency in their writing, whether students passed or did not, the public is left to analyze the effectiveness of that particular school. Teachers are then asked to write Student Learning Plans (SLPs) for their students who did not pass the test. Teacher evaluations are typically connected to their students’ performance. This is not to say teachers are directly evaluated based on how many students passed or did not pass the MSP.
In summation, the MSP is a way to measure students understanding of key curricular areas. It helps staff members identify students’ progress or lack thereof. For families, the MSP helps rank schools based on MSP performance. Administrators/principals can identify the effectiveness of their teachers’ teaching of concepts in these curricular areas. So, how can one test be so efficient, it can accurately measure all of these areas? Or, are Washington State school districts misusing the information taken from these test scores? If so, what were the original intentions of the WASL (now the MSP)? In this blog, I will analyze and attempt to shed some light on these issues.
