Mazin Education Helps Publishers Prepare for Common Core Assessments

COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Educational software developer Mazin Education (www.mazineducation.com) has released the Mazin Assess™ Publisher Enterprise Edition. The assessment platform is now available for publishers to integrate into curriculum programs for standards-based progress monitoring and high-stakes testing practice.

Mazin Assess™ Publisher Enterprise Edition provides publishers with an easy, cost-effective way to upgrade their existing assessment capabilities to better match the new Common Core State Standards. "Mazin Assess™ is the most flexible and adaptable assessment program on the market today," says Dr. Mariam Azin, founder of Mazin Education. "We developed Mazin Assess™ because we needed the ability to generate a greater variety of item types to accurately measure the kinds of knowledge demanded by the Common Core State Standards. Multiple choice and simple short answer or essay questions will not adequately prepare students for the new high-stakes tests."

Students in most states will face new assessments in 2014 created by one of two multi-state assessment consortia, PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Careers and College) or the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. The new assessments for English Language Arts and Mathematics are expected to have items designed to measure higher levels of learning, including writing assessments requiring students to synthesize responses to multiple sources, and math assessments requiring students to explain how they got their answers. A recent report by the EPE Research Center suggests that students and teachers are not prepared for the new assessments, and some experts expect test scores to drop when they are adopted.

The Mazin Assess™ Publisher Enterprise Edition can help publishers and curriculum developers create assessments tied to curriculum and instruction that better match the high-stakes tests students will be facing next year. The flexible, user-friendly platform allows publishers to develop Technology-Enhanced Constructed Response, Evidence-Based Selected Response, a range of Prose Constructed Response and a wide variety of item types using innovative drag-and-drop and matching technologies. "Publishers will be able to be much more creative in the types of items they develop, so they can more accurately assess students' level of knowledge and understanding," says Dr. Azin. "If we're going to prepare students for success on the upcoming high-stakes assessments, we need to give them item types that more accurately mirror them." 

Mazin Assess™ is one of two educational software programs developed by Mazin Education. Mazin EnCompass™, an online dropout prevention and student services management program, will formally launch in the spring of 2013.

About Mazin Education
Founded by Dr. Mariam Azin in 2012, Mazin Education (www.mazineducation.com) is a privately held, woman-owned business with offices in Ohio and Wyoming. Dr. Azin founded Mazin Education based on twenty years of experience in educational research and evaluation and her experiences as the founder and president of Planning, Research & Evaluation (PRES) Associates, Inc. Mazin Education draws together all of the resources of PRES Associates along with new talent and expertise in technology development and operations. The new company was established to put in place the infrastructure to support large-scale deployment of the educational software solutions developed by PRES Associates. Mazin Education brings together the best of both worlds: assessment and tracking solutions built on a solid foundation of psychometric research and data collection experience, and the operational expertise to support large-scale state initiatives.

SOURCE Mazin Education