About the CCSSO~SCASS Science Assessment Project

The State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards was established in October of 1991 as a way of networking states with common interests in planning for assessment and related development and implementation issues.
 
SCASS has two primary purposes: (1) to share experiences and resources related to assessment, especially newer forms of assessment and (2) to produce higher quality and more useful assessments in a shorter time period and at a lower cost where technical assistance and information networks come together under the direction of the Council.
 
Information about current and planned assessments in specific subject areas is shared in order to map student outcomes in each area of the curriculum, to discuss experimental approaches to assessment, and engage in concurrent development of prototype exercises that push the boundaries of assessment design.
 
Assessment development projects go beyond the sharing of information to develop useful and multi-faceted assessment components. Science assessments have been developed for elementary (grade 4), middle school (grade 8), and high school grade levels. During the initial planning phase, states developed Consensus Guidelines which served to articulate the parameters for developing assessments based upon common elements found across the participating state science frameworks. These have been modified as necessary to conform to evolving state and national science education standards.
 
Early in the project participating states agreed to develop conventional and innovative approaches to assessment. The resulting assessment system serves to monitor student performance at the statewide level while assisting local educators in assessing students in a manner consistent with the emerging consensus on how students should be learning science. After several months of work, the states issued a request for proposals and in 1993, eventually selecting the American College Testing (ACT) to provide technical support for assessment item development. The pooling of resources by participating states has allowed for the development of quality materials at a comparatively modest cost to each state.
 
Additionally, the project was truly collaborative in nature. Each state provided a state leader (usually someone connected with assessment or curriculum divisions at respective state departments of education) and five additional writers (usually teachers or science supervisors) to develop science assessment items. ACT provided a team which helped solve technical challenges and took responsibility for editing, piloting, field testing, assembling materials, scoring and reporting results to the collaborative. State members of the collaborative participated in nearly every phase of the development. Challenges and additional needs were identified as the project evolved and several components emerged: 1) the assessments; 2) the necessary staff development materials to help states successfully implement these new assessment systems; 3) a portfolio system; and 4) the development of opportunity to learn (OTL) indicators based upon classroom practice and instructional content. These “Surveys of the Enacted Curriculum” were developed in collaboration with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
 
The assessments are of several types: multiple choice questions, short and long constructed response items, performance events (which required the use of manipulatives and the collection and analysis of data), and performance tasks (which were designed to be from three weeks or longer in duration). Student work resulting from the performance tasks are suitable as portfolio entries. Each module consists of six or four multiple choice questions, followed by two constructed response items, one a short answer item taking approximately five minutes to complete, and the other an extended response taking an estimated fifteen minutes to finish.
 
The materials developed by the SCASS Science Project are contained on this science Assessment website for use by member states.
 
The Science Project utilizes the MetaCat®: Web-based assessment system from MetaLogic, Inc.