MAP Assessments
MAP Assessment Information
Each year, all Northwest ISD students in second- through ninth-grade take the NWEA Measures of Academic Progress – or MAP – assessments in September, December and April, as administered by our campuses. MAP is a national test that compares students to one another to see how each student learns, as we know every student learns in his or her own way.
As you prepare for family-teacher conferences and/or review your child’s MAP Growth Family Report, which has or will be sent to you, the following information will help you better understand your child’s data.
What is a “MAP” test?
MAP is a nationally normed, adaptive achievement test. Nationally normed assessments compare your child to other typical students in the same grade, tested at the same point in the school year, across the nation. Norm referenced tests help teachers know what your student knows on the day of the test compared to other students of the same grade level. Teachers use this information to help your student learn tomorrow. An adaptive test is programmed to ask students questions based on their answers. For example, when a student answers a question correctly, the test will ask a more difficult or equally difficult question next. When a student answers a question incorrectly, the test will ask an easier question next.
What is a passing score on MAP?
MAP is not a mastery assessment that students pass or fail. Instead, it is an adaptive assessment we use to identify what your student is ready to learn by finding what each student is ready to learn. The assessment can locate what your student is ready to learn as he/she answers 50% of the question right and 50% of the questions wrong. Due to its adaptive nature, questions will get more difficult or less difficult based on how the student answered the previous question.
What is a RIT score?
MAP uses the RIT (Rasch Unit) scale to help us measure and compare the academic growth for students, across all grade levels. This score represents where a student is ready to learn, regardless of the enrolled grade level. When students take this assessment multiple times, we are able to measure students’ academic growth from year to year.
What is a Percentile Rank?
The percentile rank indicates how well a student performed in comparison to other students in the same norm group. (Norm groups are students in the same grade with the same number of instructional weeks. The most recent norm study was a group of over 2.3 million students from across the United States). A student’s percentile rank indicates, on a scale of 1-99, how the student compared to other students in the norm study. In other words, a student with a percentile rank of 72 scored as well as, or better than 72% of the students in the same grade level across the country.
How can I use this information to help my student?
This Family Report provides you important pieces of information about your student’s current level of academic performance and growth targets for the year. With this information, we encourage you to ask your student’s teacher about their areas of strength and weaknesses, as well as how you can collaborate with us to reach your student’s growth targets. We also encourage you to talk with your student about the academic goals they have set based on the data MAP provided.
As with all assessments, individual MAP scores represent performance on one test, on one day. Multiple measures and trends over time will provide a more accurate picture of learner achievement and growth. In Northwest ISD, we use a variety of assessment pieces to differentiate instruction for our learners.
For additional information on MAP testing and your child’s scores, please contact your child’s teacher or counselor.