New Mexico Standards Based Assessments

Purposes of the New Mexico Standards Based Assessment

There are two purposes for the NM Standards Based Assessments:

1. To determine the level at which New Mexico students achieve the New Mexico Content Standards. Each assessment is designed to measure the state content standards delineated in the Assessment Frameworks; the NM Standards Based Assessment provides an accurate picture of student achievement of the New Mexico Content Standards.
2. To measure the progress of students over time. In the past, measures of student progress were restricted to comparing one years class with another years class. With the development of vertical scales for reading, writing, mathematics, and science, the progress of each student and group of students can be examined each year in the tested content areas.

Structure of the NM Standards Based Assessments

The NM Standards Based Assessments are paper-and-pencil assessments that are aligned to the New Mexico Content Standards and Benchmarks. The assessments consist of multiple sections for each content area. Per the table below, all areas except for writing have three sessions and writing has two sessions. Test items are multiple choice (MC) and constructed response (CR) which are sometimes referred to as open-ended items because students write out their responses as opposed to filling in a bubble next to an answer choice as happens with MC items. The percentage of items on a given assessment is generally around 30 percent, but that percentage varies slightly among content areas. For the reading, mathematics, science, and social studies assessments, CR items may require either short answer responses (SA) or extended constructed responses (ECR). Students can earn up to two points for SA responses and up to four points for extended constructed responses (ECR). CR items are scored according to previously established rubrics; rubrics for these content areas are itemspecific, so it is not possible to share the rubrics because to do so would compromise item security. For the writing assessment most of the points are earned for the student’s actual writing in response to prompts, but points are also available for planning and editing. Planning points are given for evidence of planning prior to writing the final draft of the writing task. Editing items require a student to examine a paragraph for errors and make corrections as appropriate. The rubrics used to score the writing tasks within the writing assessment are generic and thus can be shared. The rubrics and other details about the writing assessment can be found on NMPED's website: http://www.ped.state.nm.us/AssessmentAccountability/AssessmentEvaluation/index.html  

Test Development

The development of standards-based assessments is a long, involved process which takes at least a year to complete. Each step of the process is important to maximize the reliability and validity of the assessment. The following describes the steps taken during the development of a NM Standards Based assessment.