Mission:

• To improve the knowledge base and practices of educational assessment within the State of Maryland
• To promote the best practices of school improvement as it relates to research, evaluation, and assessment.
• To promote and endorse the design of reliable and valid instruments to be used by Maryland educators as they strive to improve learning for all Maryland public school students.
• To support and promote staff development activities, educational best practices, and policies dealing directly or indirectly with educational measurement.

History:
In October 1985, a group of Local Accountability Coordinators, Assessment staff from the Maryland State Department of Education, and department heads from the University of Maryland, College Park met in Ocean City, Maryland. The purpose of that meeting was to explore the possibility of creating a group to discuss issues facing Maryland's accountability program. Hurricane Gloria couldn't put a stop to this meeting and over cocktails and lots of spirited discussions, the Maryland Assessment Group (MAG) was formed. The first annual MAG conference was held in October of 1986. The meeting began on Thursday afternoon and ended promptly at noon on Friday. In the very beginning, only assessment staff were invited to attend the MAG conference. The variety of topics covered were very technical and test specific in nature. The conference continued to thrive for the next few years, shifting from Ocean City, to Wisp Ski Resort in Western Maryland and Solomon’s Island. In October 1990, budget cuts and revisions to the state testing schedule almost derailed MAG, as most districts decided not to send representatives to the annual conference in Western Maryland. Approximately eighty people attended that conference. At the conclusion of the conference a decision was made to revisit the conference schedule to allow the conference to continue without interrupting testing schedules while making it more affordable for districts to send representatives. To accomplish this, the conference date was changed to November, and Ocean City became the permanent home of the MAG conference. In addition, session were open to teachers and curriculum leaders throughout the state of Maryland. The following year and each year thereafter saw attendance grow from the eighty people attending in 1990 to over 200 the following year. Since that time MAG continues to average around 550 members annually. The conference continues to provide timely and meaningful information and allows members to engage in lively and informative discussions. Beginning in 2014, MAG once again needed to change the conference date back to October. This was again in response to changes in the state testing calendar.