Case Study
Global Competency Center for Scalable, High-Quality Assessment Item Development
Key Result Highlights
- Steady, scalable throughput of new items each month with the ability to flex capacity during peak demand.
- Faster delivery cycles for priority standards and new subject initiatives.
- Increased first-pass acceptance rate due to rigorous calibration and standardized workflows.
- Greater accuracy and consistency in metadata, improving searchability and assessment assembly.
- Significant cost efficiency achieved through a blended onshore–offshore delivery model.
- Strong foundation for AI-assisted item generation and emerging assessment formats.
The Client
The client is a global edtech provider offering large-scale learning and assessment solutions. Their assessment item bank supports districts with standards-aligned items across subjects and grades for formative and benchmark use.
The Challenge
Growing district demand required rapid expansion of high-quality items across Math, ELA, Science, and Social Studies. The client needed a scalable model to keep pace with new standards, additional languages, tech-enhanced item types, and UDL expectations, while maintaining consistent tagging and quality across a rapidly expanding item bank.
Critical Success Parameters
- Expand item development capacity while preserving rigor and quality.
- Maintain consistent metadata tagging, including DOK, difficulty, Bloom’s, and standards alignment.
- Support rapid turnaround for new initiatives, standard changes, and language additions.
- Ensure UDL and accessibility considerations are built into all stages of item development.
- Establish a cost-efficient, scalable operating model that integrates global teams.
Our Approach
- Magic established a 35-person Global Competency Center dedicated to assessment content production, combining offshore expertise with onshore leadership for alignment with classroom expectations.
- Multi-Location Operating Model
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- Offshore hub focused on item authoring, tagging, metadata QA, and editorial checks.
- US-based specialists serving as lead writers, senior reviewers, and liaisons to ensure alignment with district needs and state standards.
- Role-Based Structure for Efficiency & Quality
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- Lead item writers defined blueprints, coverage matrices, and exemplars.
- SME item writers drafted tech-enhanced, multi-step, and constructed-response items.
- Editors and QA specialists reviewed clarity, alignment, difficulty, and distractor quality.
- Tagging specialists applied metadata consistently across all items.
- Accessibility reviewers ensured UDL alignment and flagged bias and representation concerns.
- Joint Blueprinting & Governance
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- Co-developed blueprints by subject and grade, prioritizing gaps in standards coverage.
- Defined distributions of item types, difficulty bands, and DOK levels.
- Implemented calibration cycles across teams to normalize style, rigor, and tagging consistency.
- Standardized Authoring Workflow
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- Draft → Review → Metadata & Tagging → Final QA.
- Shared tools and templates ensured consistent output across all writers and reviewers.
- Flexible Capacity for Special Projects
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- Enabled rapid sprints for standards refreshes, Spanish-language expansions, new initiatives, and performance task development.
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