Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parenting versus GTness

NWEA MAP are different from grade level assessments like the Stanford Achievement Test. NWEA MAP are computerized tests which are adaptive. They're designed to target a student's academic performance by adjusting the difficulty of the questions. If a student keeps answering questions correctly, they keep getting harder questions.

The child's RIT Score is supposed to be independent of grade level, although ceiling factors seem to come into play with young gifted children taking the MAP for Primary grades and older gifted children taking standard MAP.

The beauty of MAP is it can make visible the needs of children who are performing significantly below or above grade level. This information is essentially invisible with standard grade level tests.

Ideally, a school would use this information to teach a child what he's ready to learn next. At the very least, they should share this information with parents so they can teach the child what he's ready to learn. Unfortunately, neither of these is a given.

Ah yes, I learned of the MAP test here and will try a local school district to have my son take it next year. I confused NWEA with another grade level assessment. Thanks for the clarification!

Dazey

In the nature vs. nurture debate, I say, Does it really matter? Your son is truly gifted, advanced beyond his years - does it matter how he got there? Just because the school didn't "see" his gifts doesn't mean they aren't there, or that you created them in some artificial way. So it wasn't a great year? Very soon, he'll be starting again, with another chance, and maybe this year will be different.

I used to worry that each year my kids would have to start over and "prove" themselves to a new set of teachers. Now I know, they don't have to prove anything. They are gifted, engaging and wonderful, with or without validation from anyone.

I would agree that teaching advanced concepts can backfire, as it did in our DD's case and will likely happen to DS. We afterschooled math to the point where she will soon be 2 years ahead of her already accelerated class. She is bored, and we are frustrated at our failure to be able to accelerate her further. The school said No, they have had negative experiences with further acceleration and won't allow it. So, DD daydreams during math class and teaches her friends new concepts when they don't understand. I don't regret what we've done, and we will probably do the same for DS in a year or two.

Don't give up, JB. A new year is a few weeks away, and hopefully your wonderful DS will have a better year.