Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment SystemMCAS Practice Categories

The science and engineering practices in the 2016 Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework are sorted into three Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment SystemMCAS Practice Categories, as shown in the table below. At least 50% of all Science and Technology/Engineering (STE) Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment SystemMCAS questions on each Science and Technology/EngineeringSTE test align with an Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment SystemMCAS Practice Category. Questions that align with an Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment SystemMCAS Practice Category are dually coded, meaning that they are coded to both a content category and a practice category.

Notes about the practices: Each content standard includes a reference to one science and engineering practice. For example, standard HS-PS3-2 states:

Develop and use a model to illustrate that energy at the macroscopic scale can be accounted for as either motions of particles and objects or energy stored in fields.

Although only a single practice is referenced within each standard, different practices may be assessed with the associated content. In the example above, questions assessing standard HS-PS3-2 may assess not only the "developing and using models" practice; they may also assess any other practice, such as constructing explanations or analyzing and interpreting data.

Each released question that assesses a practice will be coded to one of the three practice categories listed in the table. However, when reporting results by reporting category, a general "Science and Engineering Practices" reporting category will be used. Results will not be reported out on the three practice categories listed, due to the limited number of questions.

Last Updated: March 15, 2022