Updated Guidelines for Item Types
| Multiple-Choice (MC) |
| The Multiple-Choice (MC) items on these tests assess higher-level cognitive processes than the items in traditional multiple-choice tests. It is anticipated that students will take an average of between one and two minutes to answer each MC question. The answers are computer scored and have a weight of one point each. |
There are abilities that are difficult to assess with multiple-choice questions. These include the ability to: communicate mathematical concepts and arguments; see and make connections among strands of mathematics; make assumptions; organize and describe data graphically; and make estimates and predictions based on incomplete data or patterns of events. Also, the multiple-choice format does not easily accommodate multiple responses and partial credit for responses. For these reasons, the New Jersey proficiency assessments in Mathematics include a constructed response (open-ended) items in addition to the multiple-choice or selected-response items.
| Open-Ended (OE) |
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Open-Ended (OE) items require students to construct their own written or graphical responses and explain their responses. It is anticipated that students will take approximately ten minutes to answer each OE question. Their responses are hand scored holistically on a scale from 0 to 3. The general scoring guide was created to help readers score Open-Ended (OE) items consistently within a single test and across different forms of that test which may be administered either in a single year or over a span of years. This scoring guide is used by the trained readers who score the mathematics Open-Ended items on each of the assessments. This scoring guide is the basis for the item specific rubric for each of the Open-Ended items. |
