Language Minorities’ Performance

On the

Maine Education Assessment: 2000-2001

 

The Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) was originally implemented in 1985 as result of the Educational Reform Act of 1984. The MEA has been redesigned to align with Maine’s Learning Results which challenge schools and students to pursue academic standards which are among the highest in the nation. As you review the results from this baseline year, please keep in mind that these results represent the benchmark for measuring school and language minority student progress over the next decade.

            The revised MEA is composed of selected-response (multiple-choice), short-answer, and complex questions that require students to construct answers that demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

  The scores are reported using a numerical scale (501-580) and performance levels of Does Not Meet Standards, Partially Meets Standards, Meets Standards, and Exceeds Standards.

The scale and the performance levels will remain fixed for a period of at least five years to measure progress of students across the State in achieving the standards. It is important to know that more than 500 teachers and other educators from across Maine helped to develop the new MEA and assisted in the scoring and standard-setting process. This participation has not only strengthened the redesigned MEA but has also engaged teachers from around the state in conversations about quality standards for student work. 

 

 

Grade Levels Assessed Annually

 

Grades 4, 8 and 11

 

Content Areas Assessed

 

Reading, writing, mathematics, science and technology, social studies, the visual & performing arts and health education. Each content area assessed will be posted on this website as they become available.

 

Construction and Administration

 

 

• Implemented in 1995 as an open-response format.
• Test content was reviewed by an advisory committee.
• The test in each of the areas of science, social studies, health and arts and humanities consist of 24 open-response questions.
• Four performance levels in reading and math were established by the student-based constructed-response methods.
• Percentages of students at different performance levels are reported for each subject area tested.
•  Writing is measured by direct writing assessments (i.e., writing samples in response to prompts). The Annotated Holistic Scoring Method was used to evaluate students’ writing papers. The two readers of each paper identified up to two evaluative statements or annotations addressing noteworthy traits of the paper. The annotations reflect either “Commendations” or “needs” pertaining to the analytic traits of topic development, organization, details, language/style, sentences, grammar and usage, and mechanics. The writing section reports the number and percentage of students in the school, district and state receiving commendations or needs for each of the seven analytic traits. A student receiving more than one commendation or need for a particular element is counted only once in the determination of these data. The actual annotations appear on the Annotated Holistic Scoring Guide distributed with the student level results.

Detailed evidence of the MEA’S quality of reliability and validity is available on request.

 

 

 

Identification of Language Minority Subgroups

 

• Language Minority Student never identified as limited English proficient (LEP)
• A former LEP student who has been reclassified as non-LEP (non English fluent)
• A current LEP student

 

 

 

Language Minority Subgroup Results

 

• Graphs on the following pages reveal the performance of language minority subgroups tested on the MEA.

 

	Grade 4	Grade 8	Grade 11	Totals
Number of LEP Student Participants included in MEA Testing	49	86	60	195
Number of LEP Students Not Tested on the MEA	42	24	34	100

 

 

 

 

 

Percentage of Students Identified as Language Minority and/or Limited English Proficient (LEP) Participating in the Maine Education Assessment 2000-2001 School Year

 

 

	Grade 4 Writing	Grade 4 Reading	Grade 8 Writing	Grade 8 Reading	Grade 11 Writing	Grade 11 Reading
Language Minority Student Never Identified as LEP	25	25	21	22	21	20
Former LEP Student Who has been reclassified as non-LEP	29	30	15	15	41	41
Current LEP Student	45	45	64	63	38	39