The start of a healthy assessment culture
You’d drive nearly an hour to cross Madison County Schools. From rural campuses where a single teacher covers an entire grade level to suburban schools with 400 students in a grade, the district sits just north of Jackson in central Mississippi and consists of 23 schools and more than 12,700 students.
When Greg Paczak joined the central office 15 years ago as part of a team in what would become the Assessment and Accountability Department, benchmark assessments existed in the district, but looked quite different from what you’d find today. Teachers gathered to write questions together, gave those tests to students, ran Scantrons through a machine, and results were available sometimes days later.
Rebecca Hurst, who started as an eighth-grade math teacher in Madison County before eventually overseeing secondary assessment and accountability, remembers what those early benchmarks looked like (before benchmark assessments became standard practice in K–12 education). "With teacher-created benchmarks, the validity might not be there," she says. "In terms of data, we graded it ourselves. We didn’t have a school-level performance level, much less at a district level."
Before Mastery Connect, with teacher-created benchmarks, the validity might not be there. We graded tests ourselves. We didn't have a school-level picture of performance, much less a district-level one.
Rebecca Hurst
Assessment & Accountability Coordinator
Staying the course
Over 14 years, the question came up more than once: Is there something better?
"We’ve had moments when we would explore other companies to see—is there something better?" says Dr. Mary Moak, who spent a decade overseeing elementary assessment and accountability before retiring in 2026. "Because we always want to stay at the top of our game."
But each time they looked, the answer came back the same. Switching meant learning new software and abandoning the buy-in they'd spent years building with teachers. "We’re guilty as educators of the Flavor of the Month Club," Moak says. "We're quick to jump ship and go to the next big thing rather than staying the course and putting in the work to really get the most out of something."
They stayed. And each year, they found more to work with.
Era 1
The department's relationship with Mastery by Instructure progressed over three eras.
In the early years, the team focused on accountability. The district moved from paper-and-pencil Scantrons to online benchmarks, and the central office used results to track school performance at a district level. It was useful, but still a view from 30,000 feet.
Era 2
When Moak joined the team, the work got closer to the classroom. Data conversations shifted from "here's your score" to "here are the standards where your students struggled, and here's what we can do next." Schools that hadn't previously invited the assessment team in started scheduling visits. Eventually, Moak had all 11 of her elementary schools on the calendar, with some reaching out in June to set the whole year.
Era 3
In 2018, Dr. Paczak and Dr. Moak traveled to Salt Lake City for the Mastery Connect Leadership Institute. They came back focused on something they hadn't prioritized before: item quality. The benchmarks were good. But were the formative assessments that teachers built themselves high-quality? "One teacher brought in a 10-question quiz," Moak recalls, describing a professional development session where she asked teachers to analyze their own assessments. "Every single question but one was a DOK 1 question—and they were shocked. Having that visibility into Depth of Knowledge levels in Mastery's item bank changed how our teachers build assessments."
The item bank's visibility into Depth of Knowledge levels gave teachers the tools to fix it. So did a more fundamental realization about tech-enhanced items: a question format that Mississippi's state assessments used heavily, and one that students consistently struggled with. "I never want the technology to get in the way of a student showing what they know and what you've taught them," Moak says.
One teacher brought in a 10-question quiz, and every single question but one was a DOK 1 question—and they were shocked. Having that visibility into Depth of Knowledge levels in Mastery's item bank changed how our teachers build assessments.
Mary Moak
Elementary Assessment & Accountability Coordinator
Improving through collaboration
The Assessment and Accountability team at Madison County Schools functions as a support system to the schools in their district. They communicate with principals about what they can offer to each school’s unique situation. Then, when invited for data conversations, they show up and show what's possible.
The same philosophy shapes how they train teachers on Mastery Connect. Instead of a mandated training, new teachers learn from the veterans. "Mastery Connect is so ingrained into who we are in Madison County," Hurst says. "For a lot of our new teachers, their best resource is the team that they're joining."
Schools use the platform differently—some build curriculum maps, some deliver assessments through Canvas—and the team adapts. At one rural school with a single teacher per grade level, Hurst arrives the day before school starts, and they build trackers together. At larger schools, veteran teachers walk newer colleagues through the process themselves.
What has stayed consistent across all 23 schools is the benchmark preview cycle. Three times a year, teachers from every zone and every building gather to review the predictive assessments before they give them. Dr. Paczak and a former colleague introduced this practice years ago to get ahead of what he describes as "an angst" teachers felt about external benchmarks they didn't write. It worked because the conversations changed. "It went from 'these questions are too hard' to 'how do I raise the level of my instruction in my classroom to meet this rigor?'" he says.
Outcomes over time
Two years ago, every one of Madison County's 11 elementary schools earned an A rating from the state of Mississippi—just like the district has been A-rated for the past 12 years. Behind those ratings are teachers who know which students need more practice on which standards.
The benchmark preview cycle produced something Dr. Paczak hadn't fully anticipated: it made performance data a shared responsibility. When results came back, teachers compared notes across buildings. Some of the strongest results started coming from schools that had historically underperformed. "There were teachers at some of our historically lower-performing schools who were starting to have results that were better than some teachers at our historically higher-performing schools," Paczak says. "Some of those teachers were like, well, what's going on over there?"
"It really was an iron sharpens iron situation," he says. You can still drive nearly an hour to get from one end of Madison County to the other. But you won’t drive long to reach a high-achieving school.
The partnership with Instructure also shaped that trajectory. Over the years, the Madison County team participated in product feedback sessions, reviewed new data views before they launched, and flagged what teachers actually needed, like the side-by-side ELA passage layout now standard in the platform. "Getting to provide feedback about what our teachers would really use," Moak says, "has been most beneficial."
"I think that's one thing that Instructure and Mastery share with Madison County," Paczak says. "We're always both trying to look at how to move the mark."
Milestones worth celebrating
All 11 elementary schools earned an A rating from Mississippi
The district has achieved an A rating for more than a decade
Historically lower-performing schools began outperforming higher-performing schools
District-wide benchmark results became a shared, cross-building conversation
Instructure and Madison County share a continuous improvement mindset. That's why the relationship has lasted for a decade and a half—we're both always looking at how to move the mark.
Dr. Greg Paczak
Director of Assessment & Accountability
What makes a good assessment management system?
