I'm a 7th grade teacher in Montgomery County and we're 8 weeks out from MCAP testing. I've been trying to figure out where to focus the last stretch of review. Last year our class average on the math assessment was 58% proficient, which was honestly worse than I expected given how much we drilled operations and algebraic thinking standards.
This year I've spent more time on constructed response items because I noticed a pattern - students who score well on selected-response but poorly overall usually blow it on the 2 and 4 point constructed items. The MCAP rubrics are specific about what they want but kids don't internalize them until they've practiced writing to them a few dozen times.
For ELA, the evidence-based selected response questions seem to be the biggest stumbling block. Part A is usually fine, but Part B asking for textual evidence is where I lose about 30% of my students. Has anyone found a consistent strategy for teaching that connection explicitly in the last few weeks before the test?
ELA scores have been lower the last two years at our school. Part of it is text complexity - they're genuinely hard passages and students who haven't been reading at grade level all year hit a wall. 8 weeks isn't enough to close that gap but you can absolutely teach the test format itself.
Math tends to score lower statewide but ELA has the biggest variance in my experience - strong readers ace it and struggling readers really hit a wall with the EBSR format. The Part A/B connection is something I drill using a 'prove it' sentence frame and it's helped noticeably.
The constructed response rubrics are publicly available on the MSDE site and I make students self-score their own responses against them. Takes about 15 minutes per response but after 4 or 5 rounds they start to internalize what a 4-point answer actually looks like.
We had our best MCAP math results the year we switched from full-unit reviews to daily 10-minute spiral review of the most-tested standards. By April students had seen each priority standard probably 30 times in low-stakes settings.