I'm not familiar with MAP so can't really speak to it, but fwiw I agree with the others above who've suggested it could be related to having to answer questions orally if it was the DRA. We also found in the early grades that when DRA assessments were used the person administering them didn't always keep going - they would stop when they thought it was an ok place to stop, even though our ds could have successfully continued through many more levels. Another thing that can happen is an off-day - we didn't ever know when our kids would be assessed, and one day in 1st grade ds' teacher caught me at pickup to tell me how incredibly well ds had done on his reading assessment that day. I wasn't really at all concerned about levels, but my automatic response was surprise because ds had been up past midnight the night before (who knows why!) and so I just made an off-hand remark to the teacher that I was surprised he was able to stay awake through it. The teacher didn't say anything to me, but she right away wondered if he'd really tested to his best ability and gave him a second assessment where she offered him more challenging levels, and his level basically doubled. She just wasn't looking for it initially because he was already (on an off day) testing at a high level. It could be anything really - what I find most helpful is to look at what seems like a low score in the context of other assessment scores - has your dd had multiple high MAP scores in reading? Has she had other types of reading assessments that were high? Which test scores (high or low or in between) match what you see at home in terms of reading ability?
There's also another thing that I think is important to consider, and since I am not familiar with MAP tests I can't specifically address them. The thing to watch out for is the potential of a reading challenge when you see uneven test results. If you don't see any signs of a challenge outside of the testing, if your dd likes reading, and if you have only one test score, there's most likely nothing to think twice about. OTOH, reading challenges can be really tough to see in gifted children, particularly when they are young and start reading early. What happens with uneven testing *might* be that your child is being tested on different types of reading skills (comprehension vs fluency, silent reading vs oral comprehension etc.) It's definitely worth a look at what specific reading skills are being tested in what way (oral vs written vs multiple choice response) etc - you might find something there that would help understand why one score is lower than others.
polarbear
