부산대학교 도서관

With a national reputation for high standards and a rigorous assessment system, Massachusetts now faces a critical transition. The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's (BESE) December 2015 decision to develop a new state assessment (Next-Generation MCAS) brought with it the opportunity to improve the 2011 state standards for ELA/Literacy and mathematics, five years after their adoption. Massachusetts has revised its standards several times since 1995, when the first curriculum frameworks were adopted. For revisions to the standards to inform the design of the state assessment, however, the timeline for the revision process had to be condensed to occur from January 2016-March/April 2017. To ensure that both the revised standards and the new assessment system are high quality, the Department has continued its longstanding practice of soliciting and using stakeholders' content expertise and knowledge of standards implementation to inform the revision of the standards and assessment system. Balancing the various opportunities and constraints presented by this timeline, the Department initiated a three-phase process for standards revisions. In Phase 1 (January-July 2016), the Department engaged stakeholders through various methods, gathered recommendations for revisions, began applying the suggestions to the standards document as proposed changes and continued an iterative process of receiving feedback from stakeholders. In Phase 2 (August-October 2016), the Department refined revisions and engaged content advisors to inform proposed revisions for Board consideration and discussion in October. In Phase 3 (November 2016-March/April 2017), the Department will incorporate Board feedback on proposed revisions from BESE's October meeting and present drafts reflecting that feedback to the Board in November for its vote to release the drafts of the Frameworks documents for public comment. From December through March or April, the Department will conduct a public comment period, synthesize public comment, make final revisions and bring the final ELA/Literacy and Mathematics Frameworks documents before the Board for a vote of formal adoption. Abt Associates has prepared this report to inform the Board about the standards review process conducted to date, and to assist the Board in its efforts to consider and incorporate feedback and guidance obtained from key stakeholders. In this report, the authors summarize the standards revision process, describe the stakeholder feedback and from whom it was collected, provide an analysis of the feedback and describe how the major themes for the revisions in ELA/literacy and mathematics emerged.