English Language Arts Test Design and Development

Additional Resources

Life Cycle of an ELA Item

The Life Cycle of an ELA Item outlines the test development process for passages and items.

ELA Item Alignment and Coding

Each ELA test question is aligned and coded to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. More information may be found on the ELA Item Alignment and Coding webpage.

Information about MCAS ELA Essay Scoring

A brief MCAS ELA Essay Scoring PowerPoint was created to provide further information to educators about MCAS ELA essay expectations, especially for narrative writing at the elementary and middle school levels.

Practice Tests

Practice tests for all MCAS tests may be found on the MCAS Resource Center English Language Arts Practice Tests webpage . The practice tests will include examples of the various item types for both the paper-based and computer-based tests.

Released Questions and Student Work Samples

• The Digital Item Library provides access to released items from the MCAS computer-based tests.
• The Released Item Documents provide access to released test questions from the MCAS paper-based tests.
• The Student Work and Scoring Guides provide access to student work samples, including examples of MCAS questions, scoring guides, and student responses.

Tutorial

The Student Tutorial is to help students become familiar with how to navigate the testing environment for the computer-based tests, (e.g., advancing, going back, tool bar, embedded supports, accommodations, and item types).

Cognitive Skill Level Descriptions for English Language Arts (ELA) MCAS Items

Each ELA MCAS item is aligned to a cognitive skill level, based on Norman Webb's Depth of Knowledge levels, which are described on the Cognitive Skill Level Descriptions for ELA MCAS Items webpage.

Last Updated: May 14, 2025