INDEX, a school benchmarking association, developed the Mission Skills Assessment with researchers at ETS to measure students’ proficiency and growth in six character or noncognitive skill areas: teamwork, creativity, ethics, resilience, curiosity, and time management.
In a report prepared for the ASIA Society of deeper learning schools by the RAND Corp entitled Measuring 21st century Competencies, researchers reviewed the breadth of tools currently available for assessing these competencies, and declared the MSA, which is now used at over 90 schools nationally and globally, as the singularly most impressive, finding it especially cost-effective, easy to use, with strong reliability, validity, and resistance to faking.
I was fortunate enough to have been invited by the INDEX board and its executive director, Lisa Pullman, to research and write this user’s guide and toolkit for schools, empowering them to better use the MSA to improve student growth in the six Mission Skills. INDEX has graciously permitted me to share it here.
Below the toolkit I’ve also posted a charming video about the MSA from one of its original founding schools, New Canaan Country School.
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