CSSAP began as a four-year SCASS project in 1997 with a collaboration of 25 states and a four-million dollar grant from U.S. DOE. The primary initiative from 1997 to 2001 was the creation of a test bank for large scale assessment.

• The development of 240 assessment units/modules for use at elementary, middle, and high schools that included 720 selected response (multiple choice) questions in civics, geography, economics, and history; 240 short, constructed response questions; 240 extended, constructed response questions; and 120 performance tasks.
• 90 portfolio assessment models in civics, economics, geography, and history in problem solving, issue analysis, reasoned persuasion, reflection, and research at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. A Portfolio Professional Development Manual and searchable models in a database on CD containing the above items are available for purchase by non-members.
• A CD-ROM that contains the secure assessment items and the capacity to search by multiple criteria.
• A CD-ROM containing an interactive professional development training manual with resources, which will also be available in print form.

*** Available for purchase from CCSSO.

At the end of the four-year grant for development of the assessment item bank, state members had to decide what the next focus of CSSAP would be. That question began a discussion and an evolution for the project and the state membership that would culminate into what the project would become by 2007/08.

This evolution began with a series of discussions among state members which identified the key issues facing social studies at that time. The issues were identified as:

• Emphasis on teaching/assessing the recall of factual information rather than thinking and application
• Limited teaching of conceptual understanding
• Emphasis on textbooks as the curriculum
• Emphasis on textbook published instructional strategies and assessments
• Limited or no use of technology as an instructional tool or resource
• Limited or no use of formative assessments
• Use of assessments for end of unit grading
• Emphasis on assessment for grades instead of analysis of student work

These discussions opened to door to beginning this project with the question:
“How could the project address these issues and still maintain the assessment focus?”

The period of 2002 to 2005 was important as a learning and evolutionary process for the state members. During this time units were developed that focused on integrating web technology and the use of best practices in the instructional strategies. The second phase of the work that began in late 2005 focused on creating units that would add 21st century skills and use scaffolding of instruction and assessments to raise the level of student thinking. Scaffolding of assessments that were aligned to the scaffolding of instruction created formative assessments.