Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Using test results

Hi all. Things have been going pretty well for DS8 at school lately, got through the recent rough patch and on our way to getting back to where we were in the winter before we were attacked by the crazies. Overall DS is much more positive about school and has been doing well at home as well. Which brings me to today's concern, MAP test scores.

Last year he was in the gifted private and the most recent scores we had were from his winter and spring maps there. He got a 207 winter reading and 239 spring math. The math was on the 2-5, the reading on the k-2 test. Today we got the results from his fist map at the public school. He improved in both, going up to 224 in reading and 258 in math. He also took the language test, but I didn't get those results yet.

From what I can tell just looking around on the internet his reading score is pretty much exactly 99th%ile, similar to last year. It seems likely he will continue to perform around the 99th%ile in reading and maybe continued MAP testing will be useful to make sure his progress doesn't drop off over the years. But I'm not sure I see any further benefit to testing his math level, especially if they won't move him to the 6+. I am considering asking them to exempt him from the test next year.

This whole year they keep telling me he is having trouble with some of the 5th grade level stuff (last year the gifted school kept saying he was having trouble with 3rd grade stuff), but DS says the math is boring and easy. It is interesting that the public school used testing (IReady) at the beginning of the year to place him and determined he should be in 5th grade for math and reading, but the gifted school ignored their placement testing (which is what they said they used MAP for) and put DS in 3rd grade math and 1st grade reading.

At home DS has independently completed Khan Academy through 5th grade and has quite a bit of progress on higher grades, pre-algebra, and geometry. I've been convinced these past 2 years that the reason the schools are not seeing good math performance is that they are keeping DS at too low of a level and he is not interested enough to put forth good effort. Between what he has done on Khan, what we did in homeschool during K (Beast Academy 3) and the time he was off school last year (Beast Academy 4), the MAP tests, his 158 NVI, and his 160 on the WIAT math section I think it is pretty obvious that he has very high math potential. I do not expect the school to accommodate his current math ability in his 2nd grade classroom. I have talked to them about giving him coding or logic or even extra social skills practice at math time. It's not like he's going to fall behind. I just don't want DS to be unhappy at school. I get daily reports about refusal behaviors and tantrums at math time. They think it is because they are pushing him and he is frustrated by the difficulty of the material, I think he is frustrated by the low level of the material. How many long division problems does it take to show mastery of the concept?

So, I'm looking for opinions on the value of further map math testing. Or any further math testing really. Can the 2-5 really give any further valuable information? Since the school isn't likely to actually teach the level of math that he is ready for, could I argue that the point of the testing is lost (to inform curriculum)? The teacher told me he did great on the map math test, he scored in the 99%ile! I wish I knew what %ile his score was actually equivalent to. The norms appear to indicate that his score is pretty much the 99th%ile for 5th grade, which must be quite a bit above 99 for a 2nd grader. Do they not look at the difference?

I do have to say that I am still overall very happy with the public school and the effort they are putting forth. Last year he went up 2 points on the math MAP from summer to spring at a school that is advertised as serving PG kids, after a year at public school his math map score went up by 19. They identified and filled in his few gaps in 4th and 5th, which I assume is where the extra points came from. The gifted school just had him adding and subtracting time most of the year, which he hated! I just want to make sure that the school understands his score beyond just saying it's 99th%ile and I want to make sure DS isn't taking a test that can't really show any further useful data. It would be great if someone knew something official or had a link to show at what score there isn't much further value to the test. I did see that a score of 235+ on the 6+ indicates algebra readiness, but not sure if it does on the 2-5 (although is seems nwea says the score is equivalent across tests; I'm guessing that might be less true at the higher end?) Anyway, I talk too much :P I'd appreciate any advice/insight

NWEA currently does not recommend switching tests during the school year, but it does recommend that students being instructed in grade 6 math (which, presumably, would be the case for your DC next year) should be assessed on the 6+ from day one. So it seems likely that the school would appropriately test him on the 6+ test next year for both math and reading. That may allow for a little more spread, as there are more advanced items on that test.

You might find this document that aligns RIT subscores to Khan Academy math content interesting for home enrichment or school advocacy purposes:
https://cdn.nwea.org/docs/MAP+Growth+Grades+2-5+to+Khan+Academy.pdf

Notice also that the learning standards go up to the seventh grade in some topics, but top out at RIT scores in the upper 220s.

Well, I sent an email asking if we could opt out of the math portion of the test or be moved up to the 6+ version and got this response:

"The 2-5 content does go up to 11th grade, so we don’t give the 6+ at the elementary level. Since we use the test as a growth measure for students, I don’t think you can opt out."

Sigh

I also learned that he got 97th%ile on language, but I didn't get the actual score so I'm not sure if that's based on school or national norms. Our current school is relatively high performing, it's ranked like 90th out of about 500 in the state at 76% proficient vs state average of 48%. (Sure beats our old public school; 25% proficient in math, 44% english, the school where they refused to give us a giep and said they had a whole classroom of kids just like ds) Either way 97-99th performance is what we expected in the verbal areas and I do see some value in continuing those tests just so that we can track his growth in his weaker area. Looks like I will have a fight if I want to get him out of the math though and I have to decide if it's worth it. DS is slow on tests and just like the prior times he took the map he took hours per subject and the test overall took much of the past week of instructional time. Not that he gets a whole lot out of instructional time either, but testing can be stressful and certainly puts him in a situation where he is not practicing any social skills or developing in any way.

He is near the ceiling of the 2-5 test. His scores will actually start to go down. We had ds switched to 6 plus in 4th grade after consistently scoring in the upper 250's of the 2-5 test.

I would suggest redirecting them to the guidance documents, which indicate that they should switch him to the 6+ in September, so that they can accurately use it as a growth measure during the whole of next school year.

https://www.nwea.org/content/uploads/2017/08/MAP-Growth-Administration-Guidance-25AUG17.pdf

https://community.nwea.org/docs/DOC-2713
(this one is actually on K-2 vs 2-5, but includes points about exposure to content)

https://www.nwea.org/content/uploads/2017/10/NE-MAP-Growth-Administrative-Guidance.pdf
This is Nebraska-specific guidance, but has a bit more discussion on fitting the test level to the instructional level.

https://community.nwea.org/docs/DOC-2842
Comments specifically about gifted students moving from 2-5 to 6+.

This is literally the story of every single year for my daughter. Like literally all year her 6th grade teacher told me, "but she has gaps, she can't move on until you fill them, she has trouble with some of the grade level stuff." She scored a 590 on math section of the SAT last month. I'm trying to decide what to do if her report card comes home with another "3" in math instead of a "4".

Well, I'm not getting anywhere with opting out of the test or moving up to 6+. Wonder why there would be a 6+ if the tests were indeed exactly the same?

I do think it's wrong that they can administer a test that I don't agree with DS taking. It's not part of the standard curriculum, so I feel like I should be able to opt out regardless of my reason. Even if DS were to score higher, I'm not sure how it could show growth since he likely has mastered all of the actual math on the 6+ test. I read somewhere (maybe in one of the links above, can't be bothered to recheck right now) that after the 6th/7th grade stuff the 2-5 gives extension questions like logic and other predictive math skills questions. I'm not sure how this could actually show growth, which is the stated purpose of the test according to the email I received. I also think I read that the test keeps going until you are getting about 50% right. But DS says he thinks he only got 1 question wrong.

But hey, if the school thinks they know more than the parent it's not likely I will be able to convince them they are wrong.

Luckily a new kid transferred to the school about 2 weeks ago and he and DS have really hit it off. So the bad behavior at school is really tapering off. I believe this is because school is no longer as boring with a friend. The other boy is also special needs, but doesn't appear to be gifted, which likely makes him the first non-gifted friend DS has made! They have similar special needs though, they even share the same phobia! The school even got a complex patterned 1000 piece puzzle for DS to do during breaks, which he is very happy about. His new buddy attempts to do it with him too, which is nice. At least DS now has some motivation to get the boring work done, but less boring work would still be greatly appreciated. Luckily summer break is coming soon and I get to be in charge of education again. DS and I are going to have so much fun

One kinda funny thing. DS came home with a shirt last week he was to wear for field day. Looks like the school takes a one size fits all approach to clothes as well as education... they sent home a kids medium! Even a kids xs is big on DS, the medium went past all of his shorts I tried it with, so he looked quite ridiculous. Speaking of field day, it was going pretty well until his gym teacher splashed water on him from behind. That was the end of the positive attitude about 1 hour in. I was angry and talked to 2 staff members (including special ed teacher) and no one seemed to think it was a big deal because the gym teacher was "just joking" and was doing it to all of the kids. I just think that when you have a kid like mine you either skip him or get his attention and ask him first. DS can't stand wet clothes and does not take unexpected bad surprises well. DS chased the gym teacher and called him an idiot and then got in trouble for name calling. I'm beginning to get more and more of a picture of why DS is liking public school less and less. I've decided to skip ESY this summer and keep him home with me, but I'm also not 100% sure I want to send him back in the fall. I really want DS to get the socialization, but not at the expense of his mental health. I also worry that I am teaching DS to just quit when things aren't great. He's been kicked out of 4 schools and I removed him from 2 others. But if homeschool is really the only way DS will thrive maybe it's just time to accept it?

Well, that got a little meandery. Spell check didn't flag that, guess it's a word. Anyway, thanks for being there everyone, it really helps to have people to talk to

Hmm, it looks like you have a lot of difficult issues with your DS. I can't really speak to most of them but did want to chime in on the MAP issue. First, it is definitely not a hill to die on - save your ammunition on weightier issues. Second, at least for my kids and some of their friends, there were huge differences between math scores in the 250's vs. 260's vs. 270's vs. 280's vs. 290's vs. 300+. My mathy DS was able to score in the 260's with only elementary math but went up incrementally each year with the addition of Pre-Algebra (4th), Algebra 1 (5th), Geometry (6th), Algebra 2 (7th), and Pre-calculus (8th) in subsequent years. He needed Algebra 2 to break into the 300's. DD, who was not individually accelerated so did not take Pre-Algebra until 6th grade, demonstrated the same pattern although she was almost ten points lower with the same math school exposure. It is true that the 2-5 test may not be as accurate at the tail end due to fewer questions at the requisite level, but I know of students who score in the 290's and even 300. DS did not move into the 6+ test until he finished Algebra 1.

Another thought I had was that perhaps encourage your DS to complete the MAP tests, especially the math sections, within the standard time. While it is supposed to be untimed, our schools did not budget more than an hour and a half or so for each section. Almost all the kids finished within an hour or so. DS tended to finish within half an hour. DD used to dawdle and needed to go beyond an hour but that meant returning to the test a second day. She claimed that she needed the extra time to score her highest because apparently if you take enough time you can eliminate most incorrect answers and get points on some topics you haven't covered. I told her that wasn't the point of the test and that she needed to complete it within the first hour (class) for a more useful gauge of her actual achievement. She complied and while her scores may have been slightly lower, she was happier not to have the stress of testing into a second day ( missing classes and fun stuff).