Welcome to the MCAS Mentor Community of over 300 schools and districts statewide. We are growing to meet your needs. We started as a small group of teachers working together to devise a curriculum for after school programs.

       In 1999 several Massachusetts teachers got together to brainstorm ideas for the upcoming school year. They all had the same feeling that the pressure to improve MCAS scores in their respective districts was very high. They asked each other to share the resources they were using in their schools to help the students without “teaching to the test”.

      Over time we have realized that teaching to the test is really standards based education. If you are using the standards to drive your lessons in your daily classroom routine, over time, students should make enough progress so that "MCAS Prep" is no longer needed.

       Test preparation as a separate subject can be as simple as a set of worksheets that can be used in discrete periods of time set aside for that purpose. Worksheets are busy work, unless they are organized by curriculum strand and standard and are used to bring students into the assessment process. You can work with them to create rubrics for excellence for the work they do in the classroom. Use worksheets as pre and post tests for strands as you proceed throughout the school year.

        Districts are struggling to identify professional development that is relevant and reinforces teachers' understanding of the frameworks. We've put together some resources for teachers on the professional development subjects you ask about most often.