Regional Meetings

SMCAA Winter Regional Meeting 2026

Assessment Focus

Registration Coming Soon!

Regional Meetings are 2.5 hours in length. For Specific start times, please see below.

Target Audience: Curriculum Directors, Assistant Superintendents of Curriculum and Instruction, Building Principals, and Instructional Coaches dedicated to aligning rigorous learning goals with robust, meaningful assessment practices.

Core Focus: Comprehensive Assessment Design

Building on SMCAA’s mission to support high-quality training in curriculum, instruction, and assessment, this session dives deep into the architecture of effective classroom and district assessments. Participants explore three primary pillars of assessment design:

• Designing Classroom Tests: Emphasizes the use of test blueprints to guarantee thorough domain coverage, align item types with cognitive rigor (DOK levels 1–3), and accurately measure factual, conceptual, and procedural knowledge without over-sampling low-level recall.
• Designing Performance Tasks: Focuses on creating authentic, rigorous learning events that assess complex processes and products, successfully blending real-world application, student voice and choice, and clear evaluation rubrics.
• Writing Constructive Response Questions: Explores best practices for crafting short-answer (SA) and extended-response (ER) items that spark higher-order thinking, supported by objective, calibration-ready scoring guides to eliminate grading bias.

Key Session Components

• SMCAA Updates: Review of upcoming networking events, regional opportunities, member resources, and professional learning cohorts.
• DESE Updates: Crucial state-level updates regarding school accountability, reporting, and legislative mandates.
• Collaborative Design Protocols: Hands-on activities where curriculum leaders practice building, reviewing, and auditing assessment blueprints, prompts, and rubrics.