Has anyone ever heard of this before?

DD took the winter reading MAP test. At our school, the teachers come around and write down the scores (not sure why this is done as I thought data went straight to MAP servers). DD said she told her teacher a score of 197 (when she started with 207 in the fall). DD said she just looked at someone else's screen and copied from a nearby student (she plays around like this all the time). The teacher did not look at her screen according to DD and just took her word for it.

Later, DD's teacher tells us DD got negative growth and has to retake the test. DD retakes the test and gets her new score. The teacher says she will resend results but now claims MAP won't delete the negative growth score and that I am free to call NWEA to resolve the problem myself (which I don't believe I even can because of NWEA rules).

I have never heard of this. DD's older sister retook a test last year and there was no problem. We got the new scores and everything was OK.

DD's teacher says she doesn't have time to deal with this (why she asked me to call myself). I feel it's just incompetence and I'm frustrated that I have no idea how DD is really doing in this class.

I don't understand why the incorrect score is in the NWEA system if your DD just copied the score onto a piece of paper and gave it to the teacher. I don't see why the teacher would be entering data in to the testing system. I would clarify with the teacher.

We've never had that exact situation, but is the school saying that your DD's permanent school record won't include the new score? If it would just include both, I wouldn't worry too much about it (scores can dip and rise). If the school will ignore the first score in favor of the second, you probably shouldn't worry too much about them both appearing on the report. DD once had a pretty decent winter MAP drop (and they didn't do a retake, because it was still relatively high) that popped back up in the spring. DD had decided to stay up all night reading a book the night before winter MAP (unbeknownst to us until the next morning)...that score is still on her permanent record, but it has never hurt her.

To clarify, DD's teacher is saying no other report can be provided to us except for the one which shows negative growth because NWEA will somehow not accept the test retake that DD's teacher administered and update DD's score. The teacher is saying NWEA refuses to do anything about the situation. I have never heard of this before. I thought it was all automatic.

I thought this was all a simple operation to delete a test and then retake. DD's older sister's teacher kept "disappearing" her reading tests last year forcing her to retake MAP reading 2 or 3 times. Others on the forum at that time told me that situation was staff incompetence.

Not sure why NWEA would not accept a retake in their system and update the score.

Odd. Our students can no longer see their scores right after the test (it must be a setting, as they used to be able to), so we only see what shows up on the report. It simply doesn't sound right that the teacher only gets self-reports from the students.The school or NWEA should have a record of all scores.

Why in the world is the teacher taking the word of a student on a test score? I could just say I got a perfect score, and have nothing close to it… the test scores should be calculated and saved somewhere else, or the teacher responsible for checking the actual score. This sounds like complete incompetence on the teacher's part...

The test is computer-adaptive, so how in the world doesn't the school computer or NWEA have a record of ALL of the testing??? Their answer doesn't make any sense.

This is my thought as well. I don't understand why the student's are writing down their scores and then telling the teachers. I thought as soon as a test was completed, the results are uploaded to the MAP server and become available the next day.

We had something suspicious happen this year with older DD's scores. We received her fall report at the beginning of the year. At conferences at the end of October, we got another copy of the report from her teacher, but this time, one of her earlier fall scores had been changed (even though she did not retake a test from this past fall). It no longer matched the fall report we had received earlier. There was no accounting for it and because we are trying to be totally non confrontational with DD's teacher as this year will determine placement for next year, we didn't say anything. I looked around on the web and all I could see was that instructional weeks can be changed which can somewhat alter the report. There is little information out there for parents to find out about how the software works.

My kids are in h.s. now, but did MAP for 3 years in middle school. Although the kids *could* see there scores at the end of testing, we received an official looking report each year, so the OPs situation sounds strange to me too.

But what I wanted to add is that it also seems strange that the school would do a retake in the case of negative growth. Our dd always had a big gain in reading over the *summer*, and declines during the school year. I used the data to argue that the school was not teaching her anything :-) However, I think the fact of the matter is that for kids near the ceiling, which she always was, the ability of the test to detect growth is diminished, and the zigzagging of the scores over time is just random noise.

We have never had negative growth before either but from what I could gather reading comments on NWEA's Spark Forum it seems retakes are not all that uncommon. Not getting your score seems way out there.

Just wanted to update this with the exact wording from the e-mail we received so that others can understand what I am dealing with here:

The first e-mail simply stated:

"while analyzing the reading data, I noticed that she has what is called a negative growth score. NWEA recommends that she retake the test."

Then once the test was retaken and we had been told we would be provided with the report but it never came, we got this 2 weeks later when there was no follow-up from the teacher:

"I have been in contact with NWEA because they did not process her new score and have kept her negative growth score. NWEA has not been able to tell me why it is not registering. I will send you the report as soon as they fix their data. You can contact them if you would like."

I feel it's bizarre of her asking us to contact NWEA about a test she is supposed to be responsible for administering correctly.

I would contact someone in administration. I cannot imagine that NWEA would be amenable to dealing with a parent about a score issue. I would think that they would only deal with school personnel.

The fact that the school doesn't have a record of your DD's actual test score on her first test really doesn't make sense since it's a computer adaptive test capable of spitting out a bunch of subscores along with the main score and the Lexile range. If your DD's teacher just copy down and input the single number representing the main score, that doesn't provide sufficient information for a report.

DD had to retake the Math Map once last year because she didn't get a chance to complete the whole test (adminstered over two sessions) within 3 or 4 weeks so the computer deleted her test and she had to start all over. It would make sense that you have to delete the old test before inputting a new one since they would both be winter scores. However, I thought the district has the software to generate the reports so I am not sure why NWEA would need to be involved?

Your daughter deliberately gave the teacher an incorrect score?

While it seems odd that the computer generated score isn't available it may be a good learning exoerience.

That makes alot of sense. In light of that, I don't know why they go to all the trouble to do it. The District has the client-server version so DH thought it might be some weird thing where they have to manually input scores then upload to NWEA's server. But you are correct that they cannot incorporate all other data to get that report.


It's a mystery to me too. I found a technical manual for MAP from one of the elementary schools online dated May 2015 (so fairly recent) and the process to retake a test looks very straightforward. It shows how you can retest as many times as you like but NWEA only accepts the most valid test and that is on the final report.

Here is a copy of the text:

Can a student take the MAP test again?
Any student may be retested in any test session, even the same one. Once they are done with a test, if you would like to retest them, just assign the same test again and they can retake the test. The system will let the student take the test as many times as you want, however, only one score, per subject, per term, is considered valid. NWEA will determine which test is more valid by giving it a standard of error number. The test with the lower standard of error will be
considered the valid test.

It then goes on to say that you just click on the student's name, click "Test Again", click "Go", assign the test, then the student logs back in and retakes the test.

From this technical manual, I don't see how the report could not be printing out properly.

It sounds you've bought into the MAP assessment regimen but were I in your shoes I would seriously consider just waiting for the spring testing round and not spending another hour or two of instructional time on a repeated assessment. How much are you going to really gain out of this exercise?