Assessment/Accountability MCAS
Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System

Reporting Scaled Scores for Grade 3 Students

The scale for all English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science and Technology/Engineering tests in grades 3-10 will be as follows:

A major advantage of scaled scores is that they provide more information about where a student's achievement falls within a performance level. For example, a student with a scaled score of 238 is much closer to the Proficient performance level than a student with a scaled score of 220, although both fall within the Needs Improvement level.

As you may recall, when the MCAS grade 3 reading test was introduced in 2001, the Department reported only three performance levels as opposed to the four used for the other MCAS tests. Rather than establish a separate, or truncated scale, the Department decided to report only raw scores and performance levels for grade 3 students. With the establishment of a fourth level (Above Proficient) in 2006, it became possible to calculate scaled scores for grade 3 tests that cover the full 200-280 range.

An added impetus was the introduction of the MCAS growth model in 2009, which has given the Department a technically sound way to compare scaled scores from year to year. Reporting grade 3 scores on the 200-280 scale, together with the student growth percentiles, will provide educators with information that will help them gain a more complete understanding of how their students are progressing from grade 3 to grade 4 and beyond.