Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System

Using the 2018 MCAS Sample Student Work and Scoring Guides Online Tool

Structure

Each page of this online tool contains student work samples and scoring guides for one grade level and one content area (e.g., Grade 5 Mathematics).

The sample responses provided here are selections of actual student work from the spring 2018 MCAS administration. In order to protect individual students' privacy, all names and references of a personal nature have been altered or removed. Otherwise, the responses appear as the students wrote them.

How to Access Student Work in the Online Tool

In the Question Directory for Student Work locate the grade and subject of the MCAS student work you wish to access.
Click on the link for the appropriate subject (for example, Grade 5 Mathematics). This will take you to a list of questions for which student work samples are available.
Select the question for which you wish to see student work.
When the page opens displaying the question you selected, scroll down to the "Scoring Guide and Sample Student Work" grid. Links to student work with the highest score points appear at the top of the "Score" column of the grid; score points linked to the lower-scoring student work follow in descending order.
Click on the score-point link to the student work you wish to view. To view additional responses, continue clicking on score-point links in the "Score" column of the grid, or click on the score-point links located at the bottom of each window that contains a student work sample.
In the "Description" column of the "Scoring Guide and Sample Student Work" grid, you will find the scoring criteria for each score point.
For ELA questions and the grade 10 writing prompt, each student work sample is accompanied by an annotation explaining in detail how that particular response was scored.

Scoring of Test Questions

An overview of procedures used for scoring student responses and compositions is presented in the MCAS fact sheet, "Scoring Student Answers ...."

Printing Instructions

Printing the Questions and Rubrics

Select "Print View" from the bottom right side of any page. This view excludes extraneous navigation and graphic elements.

If you still have trouble, try printing in landscape format:

Select the "File" menu in your browser's tool bar.
Select "Print" from the File menu.
Select the "Properties" button and select to print landscape.

Printing the Samples

Select "Print Now" from the top right side of the page.

Due to the length of some of the samples, you may need to reduce the header and footer margins of the page in order to fit them on a single page.

How to reduce margins in Firefox:

Select the "File" menu in your browser's tool bar.
Select "Page Setup…" from the File menu.
From the Margins & Header/Footer tab, reduce the size of the top and bottom margins.

How to reduce margins in Internet Explorer:

Select the "File" menu in your browser's tool bar.
Select "Page Setup" from the File menu.
From the Margins section of the "Page Setup" dialog box, reduce the size of the top and bottom margins.

Optionally print on legal sized paper.

Last Updated: August 28, 2018