Montana Alternative Student Testing Pilot Program

The MAST Pilot Program has developed pathways to reform the traditional testing system while preserving local control and ensuring that the federally mandated summative assessments can both provide flexibility and meaningful, instructionally relevant data. 

The State of Montana and the OPI are highly invested in stakeholder engagement. The serendipitous alignment of goals with Education First, New Meridian, and the Federal Grant system has created a team of brilliant education specialists who are all aligned in improving the assessment system in our great State. 

• The OPI has worked with Education First and New Meridian to seek funding to support the MAST Pilot Program. 
• The OPI is working with Education First, New Meridian, and the Center for Assessment to convene multiple stakeholder groups to engage in meaningful and timely consultation on "Through-Year Assessments". 

The Montana OPI received letters of support in recognition of these efforts from: 

• North Dakota Department of Public Instruction
• Montana Governor's Office
• Montana School Board Association

Re-imagine the educational system to help each student reach their full educational potential. 

• Support meaningful innovation in educational assessment through statewide assessments that are closer to the student and teacher and measure student growth over the academic year (or within a year) to drive interventions and accelerate student learning.

Create a system that is local-led not state driven.

• Empower districts to determine what tools are best to measure student learning.
• Allow districts to identify assessments that best serve their students [on an individual level] and help educators drive necessary supports and interventions.
• Grant local flexibility to provide more opportunities to focus on learning.

Create a formative system structured to continuously improve teaching and learning and to inform education policy [ARM 10.56.101(2)].

• Provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate knowledge and skills.
• Yield actionable feedback during instruction to help adjust ongoing teaching and learning strategies and improve students’ attainment of curricular learning goals.
• Allow students to have ownership and autonomy in their learning.

Leverage what’s already in place to serve learning and teaching needs and fulfill state and federal reporting and accountability requirements.

• Provide an integrated approach to meeting both classroom learning needs and school and state-level information needs [ARM 10.56.101(2)].  

Yield data that is actionable and timely to serve teaching and learning needs [ARM 10.56.101(2)]. 

• Provide meaningful and transparent information on learning to students, parents, educators, and principals to understand and address the specific academic needs of students [34 CFR 200.8(a)(1)(ii)]. 
• Provide parents and teachers information in an understandable format as soon as practicable after the assessment is given to ensure they have the best information to improve outcomes.  

Permit data collection that is closest to the classroom [student and teacher] to inform teaching and learning.  

• Aggregate data up from 3 critical points in time across the school year [e.g., fall-winter-spring]. 
• Accurately measure grade-level proficiency and progress within the academic year. 
• Ensure multiple measures of proficiency so that no single data point serves as an indicator of student success.  

Ensure the assessments are time-limited to balance instructional time and the need to gather information about student learning.   

• Districts are overburdened with assessments that don’t yield actionable data, whereas, the “through-year” model is more aligned to the data points that educators require to apply supports and interventions that can drive student learning.  

Maintain a commitment to ensuring all students are provided with high-quality access to educational services and needs. 

• Data must support the mission of serving all students and directing resources where they are most needed.

The Montana OPI is working to develop an improved assessment system that will accurately reflect the needs of our students, teachers, and administrators while providing useful flexibility in terms of administration. The OPI will utilize a new assessment model that supports “Through-Year Assessment” design. That is, rather than a single end-of-year assessment, the test will be broken up over the course of the academic year.

A “Through-Year Assessment” design benefits students, teachers, parents, and administrators by providing actionable data at the beginning of the school year and by providing a meaningful model of student growth over the academic school year.

New Meridian will implement the MAST Pilot Program starting in the summer of 2022. New Meridian will assist the OPI with piloting the “Through Year Assessment” in Grades 5 and 7 during the 2022-2023 school year. 

This means the OPI will continue to use Smarter Balanced Summative Assessment for the SY2022-2023. It is the OPI’s responsibility to maintain the end-of-year state summative assessment that meets federal requirements until the OPI can demonstrate to the U.S. Department of Education that the system can be fully operationalized across all tested grades, students, and Montana schools.

This ambitious initiative will be supported by multiple funding sources, including a private grant from Education First that is supporting the first phase of development. The federal Competitive Grants for State Assessments (CGSA) funds awarded to the OPI will put key delivery mechanisms in place, build educator capacity, and accelerate the timeline toward statewide implementation.

In September 2022, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the Montana Office of Public Instruction the Competitive Grants for State Assessments (CGSA) program. The purpose of this program is to enhance the quality of assessment instruments and assessment systems used by States for measuring the academic achievement of elementary and secondary school students. It is authorized by section 1203(b)(1) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). 

The Montana grant application focuses on: