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standards--alignment

How MasteryPrep Aligns State Standards to What’s Actually Assessed: A Deep Dive

  • November 13, 2024
In the United States, every state is required by law to set its own academic standards for public schools and to assess students’ progress toward those standards with testing.

However, alignment between those standards, the district and school curricula, and what’s actually tested on high-stakes standardized assessments is a moving target. That means that without coherent test preparation strategies, students’ results may not reflect the true quality of their education. Poor outcomes can also have serious consequences for students, educators, and schools alike.

  • How Misalignment with State Standards Can Leave Students Behind
Misalignment between what’s taught in the classroom and what’s measured on standardized tests is a widespread problem across the country, with multiple contributing causes.

A lack of alignment between learning standards and curriculum design can be challenging at the school and district levels. For example, if a state’s learning standard for reading focuses on critical analysis of a text, but the curriculum leans more toward summary than interpretation, students may not develop the skills they need to succeed on standardized assessments.

However, a more pervasive problem for many educators and students is misalignment between state standards and state standardized assessments, as well as college-entry exams like the SAT and ACT. Since these assessments can impact everything from a student’s ability to graduate to their post-high school options, the consequences of this mismatch can be severe.

  • The Challenge of Hidden Standards
Nationwide, most standardized tests are created and administered by outside entities like Cambium, Pearson, and The College Board. These national—or even international—organizations work with states to design assessments, but they have their own staff, systems, and goals. This means each company also has its own “hidden standards,” or the unspoken criteria that influence how the tests are designed.

Hidden standards can include factors like the rigor and style of questions and subtleties of test formats, as well as the specific skills and knowledge that the tests focus on. For example, state standards might weigh seven reading skills equally, but the standardized assessment might focus far more heavily on two of them—and that means students who are more adept at demonstrating the other five skills are at a disadvantage.

The problem grows even more complex when national exams like the SAT and ACT—many of which are factored into state standards for measuring school success and accountability ratings—are considered. The standards these assessments measure may or may not match up with state curricular guidelines, and students who lack access to outside test-prep support are at a particular disadvantage.

Free Guide: 5 Proven Ways to Meet Accountability Standards

Our MasteryPrep guide will help you transform state accountability ratings from a source of stress to a benchmark reflecting consistent student proficiency.

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  • How MasteryPrep Bridges the Gap to Help Students Succeed
To overcome this misalignment and help students demonstrate their skills, educators and schools need test preparation resources that target both official state standards and hidden assessment standards.

MasteryPrep’s solutions do just that. Unlike our competitors, our curricula and tools go far beyond state standards to ensure students are prepared to succeed within the specific context of each high-stakes assessment, whether it’s a state end-of-course exam or a national assessment like the ACT.

Here’s how we do it.

  • Step 1: Gathering Resources
Our experts start by gathering and analyzing materials, including:

  • Official test blueprints or specifications that outline the exam’s framework and focus areas
  • The academic standards the test aims to assess
  • All available sample exams and previously administered exams.

  • Step 2: Analyzing Standards and Test Specifications
Then, we compare the specific language used in both standards and test specifications to the example test questions to identify both areas of alignment and the underlying skills or “hidden standards” that are assessed but not explicitly mentioned.

During this phase, we also identify the ways each test uses “trick questions” or specific formulations to assess beyond straightforward content knowledge.

  • Step 3: Crafting Instructional Material
Next, our experts create test-prep curricula that focus on hidden standards, the most-commonly assessed content areas, and test-specific strategies.

As an example, suppose a standard involves making inferences, and we identify a pattern of trap answers based on assumptions or premature conclusions. In that case, our instructional material will explicitly teach students strategies to avoid these pitfalls and make high-quality inferences. If hidden standards are particularly complex and prevalent, we develop entire units based on specific skills. For instance, if we see trap answers based on false assumptions appearing across multiple sections of the test, we might build out a unit on avoiding those assumptions.

Throughout our materials, we focus on the practical application of core concepts, incorporating practice scenarios and questions that mimic the format and rigor of the actual exam. This means students are familiar with both the content and the types of questions they will face, minimizing stress and confusion on test day.

  • Step 4: Evaluating and Refining Instructional Material
As assessments are constantly changing, so are our test preparation solutions. We regularly assess the effectiveness of our materials in improving performance on practice and actual exams and seek feedback from students and educators. We use this data and changes in assessments and standards to refine and update our materials continually.
  • The MasteryPrep Difference
No other test preparation company prepares students for every aspect of standardized assessments like MasteryPrep. And it isn’t just our content that’s different. Our curricula and tools draw on the most up-to-date learning research and include adaptive digital tools to meet students where they are and keep them engaged.

The result? Students have the knowledge, test-taking skills, and confidence to meet and exceed exam requirements.

Explore MasteryPrep Solutions

MasteryPrep offerings provide districts with access to a suite of standards-aligned test-prep tools and resources that can be implemented throughout the school year. We partner with schools to implement our products so your students can score college-ready on their assessment.
Learn More

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