Cape Elizabeth Superintendent Alan Hawkins is supporting a movement to replace the Maine Educational Assessments, created in 1984, with a test educators there consider more comprehensive.

The Northwest Evaluation Association distributes the Measures of Academic Progress tests, which Cape will administer in a pilot run for ninth-graders late January. Depending on the success of the tests, Cape will then move to test other grade levels in the spring, said Superintendent Alan Hawkins.

There are currently 33 of the 286 school districts in Maine using the association’s online testing system. Scarborough schools piloted the Measures of Academic Progress tests last year and began testing their students with the Measures of Academic Progress this year. The test replaced TerraNova, which Superintendent Bill Michaud said provided less comprehensive results and was more expensive to administer.

Hawkins chose the Measures of Academic Progress tests for several reasons: the expedient one-day results return, and the comprehensive testing results, he said. The results include a series of reports for each student and are accessible almost immediately. Because it’s administered online, schools do not wait months as they do with the Maine Educational Assessments.

These factors are moving districts around the state to support using the new tests in lieu of the state mandated Maine Educational Assessment’s, which measure student progress according to the standards of Maine’s Learning Results legislation, enacted in 1996.

School administrators in Sanford have begun asking other school superintendents to lobby the commissioner of education to switch to the new tests.

Scarborough Superintendent Bill Michaud said, though he was unaware of Sanford’s lobbying efforts, he would support them because the Measures of Academic Progress test results are “far superior” to other testing results, including the Maine Educational Assessments.

“The MEA doesn’t give the in-depth information that NWEA gives you,” said Hawkins.

This type of testing provides results, which inform the teacher of not only the students’ performance, but of their skill level, said Carolyn Mock, client enrollment specialist for the Northwest Evaluation Association. The test results are broken down by category. For example, English is splintered into categories, including composition structure, grammar usage, punctuation, and writing process.

With the Measure of Academic Progress tests, the questions either increase or decrease in difficulty depending on the answers. With the Maine Educational Assessments, the questions remain static. Every eighth-grade student answers the same questions, which are based on projected skill level.

“Teachers get info on what individual students have for deficiencies,” said Michaud.

Mock said this system is more accurate because it informs teachers about their students varying skill level as well as providing teachers with some direction once the test is complete. For instance, if a child demonstrates proficiency in a certain area of mathematics, the testing service will recommend which skill to focus on next.

“We’re going to learn a lot more about the students,” said Scarborough High School English Department Chair Gerry Hebert.