For several years, Michigan Assessment Consortium (MAC) has been our partner in sustainability planning and innovative assessment work. With a belief that all children deserve a quality education that prepares them for success, MAC focuses on providing leadership and services to advance high-quality, balanced assessment practices and systems.
“And a quality education depends on the alignment of curriculum, instruction and balanced, meaningful assessment that supports and advances, as well as verifies, learning,” said MAC CEO Kathy Dewsbury-White.
MAC leaders have served as presenters, coaches and thought partners as we’ve developed our framework for sustainable change. We’re also exploring deepening performance assessment through national collaboration. And there’s a lot to learn from MAC as an intermediary.
What are intermediaries?
From our glossary: Local intermediaries are the connective tissue between policy and practice, vision and execution, innovation and sustainability. They convene partners, translate strategy and anchor change in relationships rather than compliance.
Source: “Trust & Transformation: Why Local Intermediaries Are the Key to Education’s Future.” Midles, Tran (2025). Getting Smart.
Dewsbury-White explains in six ways MAC, like many other intermediaries, helps to fill education system gaps and strengthen state work on assessment through implementation.
1. Operating where policy ends and practice begins
By statute, Michigan’s Department of Education is responsible for standards and statewide assessment programs. MAC’s role is different — and complementary. “The Michigan Assessment Consortium has grown because it complements the work of our state department of education. We pick up where they leave off,” said Dewsbury-White. “We focus on getting the knowledge and practices about balanced assessment systems and the classroom practices that support learning implemented by local school agencies and embraced by the various organizations and associations that serve our local school agencies.”
2. Focusing on getting resources used — not just created
“We do create materials and resources,” Dewsbury-White says, “but it’s the ‘getting things used’ and implemented in school systems and practices that defines the purpose of our organization.” MAC was commissioned by our state education agency to make this open educational resource website launched in September 2025 with 170 items and continues to grow. These performance assessments and competencies are designed to support personalized and competency‑based learning, and they’re intentionally shareable.
Rather than producing tools that sit on shelves, intermediaries like MAC concentrate on whether ideas and resources actually change practice. Implementation, not compliance, is the work. And the resources are developed without state-specific context, so they can reach beyond state lines.
3. Building and sustaining relationships across the system
“We are highly relationship dependent,” the Dewsbury-White notes. While MAC’s most important partnership is with the state education department, the organization also works closely with higher education institutions, education service agencies, teacher unions, arts and culture organizations and state education associations. “This work is challenging,” she admits, “but it’s also the most invigorating part of how Michigan Assessment Consortium functions.”
Dewsbury-White shares some of MAC’s strategies for sustaining relationships:
- “When a partner organization leader changes, we ask the outgoing leader to mentor the incoming leader about the importance of our relationship
- We sign on to statements, papers and reports to endorse other organizations’ work
- We advise and help inform white papers, policy papers and even newsletters
- We sought and secured the Michigan State Board of Education’s endorsement of the initial Assessment Literacy Standards we published in 2015
- We pursue grants and submit conference proposals with partner organizations
- We convene networks, communities of practice and conferences to engage with other organizations and individuals”
These actions root change in relationships rather than mandates.
4. Develop educator expertise at scale
One of MAC’s most powerful contributions is building assessment expertise among educators. Through leading the Michigan Performance Assessment Cadre, MAC has worked with more than 100 teachers, with a seventh cohort forming soon to work through the 2026-27 academic year.
“Michigan Assessment Consortium’s contribution,” Dewsbury-White says, “is in developing assessment expertise in educators — teachers and administrators.” This builds both professional agency and system capacity.
5. Strengthening systems by valuing educators
For innovation to scale, Dewsbury-White outlines four conditions:
- Meaningful change in classroom practice
- Sustainability
- Diffusion
- Shared ownership
All four require people.
“We need to create and maintain systems that attract expertise and retain it,” she argues. Educators are motivated by their ability to support students well, and intermediaries help nurture those “superpowers” through professional learning and shared practice.
6. Communicating with clarity
There are all sorts of thoughts about assessment, biases based off experiences. But to talk about them accurately, one has to know what exactly is being discussed. That’s where communication comes in, especially when advocating.
“Knowing what students know is at the heart of teaching and learning,” said Dewsbury-White. “Assessment is a complicated enterprise but absolutely within reach of everyone to understand and use, first to support learning and second to verify learning. When we understand assessment as the heart of teaching and learning, we’ll flip the script on the negative narrative that has been embraced and codified in law to overuse assessment evidence for a variety of accountability purposes.”
When assessment is understood as foundational to learning, rather than primarily a tool for accountability, it becomes a source of clarity, professionalism and student success. And an intermediary like MAC is instrumental in helping facilitate that understanding.
