Hi all,

This is my first post in this forum. Google search led me here.

We have two boys, the older one just turned 7 and is enrolled in public schools in Maryland as a first grader. Here in Maryland, students take MAP test three times a year. His first test, which was conducted in the first week of school year, came out as a pleasant surprise to us. He scored 211 in reading, and 215 in math. Also included in the report was a projected increase in the scores at the end of the school year (both projections suggested slight increases to about 220). Well, long story short, his second test came back yesterday with literally the same scores (reading 211, and math 213). Given that all tests have uncertainties; this indicates that little progress was made.

He has complained about boredom at school. When asking him to describe a normal day, he said that a lot of times he just picks up a book from the shelf and reads by himself at the corner. As parents, we certainly hope that he could be challenged, yet we realize that his teacher has many students to attend to and care for. We�ve worried for a while that he may not be learning much at school. This recent MAP score in certain ways acts to confirm our concerns.

My question is: shall we take this MAP score literally and assume that he made no academic progress over half a school year? With private school not being an option, shall we start challenging him at home?

Thank you for your time and attention!!

Best,
Lucy

Welcome!

MAP test scores have been a rather regular topic of discussion on the forums, you might want to try the "Search" feature.

Definitely support your child at home by providing challenging material and opportunities in his areas of interest.

Libraries provide many hours of enjoyment and academic/intellectual stimulation while allowing a child ample choice and leeway in decision-making.

Many kids take part in extracurricular activities... from sports teams to music lessons, theater, dance, chess, science club, fencing, horse riding, swimming, world languages. This is the time for a child to explore many possibilities, as this helps him learn his own interests, strengths, weaknesses.

Before moving to purely outside school supplementation, you may want to have a discussion with the school about the tiny progress and potential need for challenge. Proceed with caution in your approach as individual teachers respond in dramatically different ways (from delight and willingness to work out a solution to hostility). There is a great deal of advice on this forum about ways to advocate.

In general, though, it's not appropriate for a child to be spending math class reading a book. Unless, maybe, it's one from the Life of Fred series. ;-)

Thank you! I'll admit that this forum is amazing. I spent much time over my lunch break reading threads, and will continue doing so over the weekend.

We have discussed about challenging him at home. The central issue is that he is already bored at school. We are worried that if he is further ahead of the curve, the boredom could be consequential. We've been trying to feed him books that interest him (biography and history are his favorites), but that is as far as we went. It ain't easy being a parent, is it?

We did try to move him away from academics out of school hours. He does year around swimming, and plays baseball and soccer. He also learns foreign language on Sunday, which, according to his one-time comment, is where he does the most learning. This comment, of course, made us rather sad.

Not in the US. But what is the ceiling of the test being given. The closer you are to the ceiling the less useful it is is as a progress indicator. Also check the school policy about working ahead of grade. He may be reading because he has reached the highest level they are allowed to teach in first grade.

The ceiling is a long ways off on MAPS test. MAPS test is all about national norming and measuring individual student growth. The effect of No Child Left Behind is that advance children are not progressing, I will not support that claim here as I trust you can google and find it.

It's likely that your child is taking the MAP-MPG version of the test and by scoring above 200 on both, would have more room beyond the lower grade test's ceiling by transitioning to the grades 2-5 test.

NWEA Recommendations for Transitioning Students from MPG to MAP 2 – 5

A helpful link from the archives:
NWEA - useful information?

There are ceilings on MAP ...

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1nA_PlvjvwFTi5vMwRxlfmmVUJo63pfwn67ZAMHaV4oU


MATH
Primary 110 ------------------------------> 240
MAP 2-5 160 -----------------------------> 260
MAP 6+ 160 --------------------------------------------------> 320
READING
Primary 110 ----------------------------> 220
MAP 2-5 150 -----------------------------> 250
MAP 6+ 160 ------------------------------------------------> 300

At 215 ish, a child's lack of growth is not due to a test ceiling. If the student isn't at projected RIT there was an instructional problem in the classroom.

Not necessarily .. remember its a test that gives a snapshot of a day. It could be a good day or a bad day for the child. Growth is actually measured spring to spring.

From what I've seen of MAP some kids might have about the same score for an entire year (dropping or rising slightly every few months) and then take a big jump up. I don't think it's all that sensitive. One lucky or unlucky guess can change the score.

Thank you all. This makes me feel a lot better. DS reads a lot, which I honestly think is the most important thing at his age. As much as we'd like him to make academic progress, we'd be most pleased if he is having a happy and memorable childhood!

I would not make that assumption at all. Neither of my 8th graders consistently increased with every administration of MAP. However, if you step back and look at broad patterns over years, then scores should roughly show an upward trend. Furthermore, MAP scores reflect a single day and not all the skills students actually acquire in school. As an example, DS' math score dropped 8 points from one administration to the next but I wasn't worried since he told me that he accidentally hit enter with a wrong answer marked. In his case, with scores near the upper limit (above 300), missing a question may have re-routed his test to easier questions. I don't remember how high the Primary version of MAP goes but that may be an issue as well.

Would you be concerned if the percentile kept dropping over two school years of test periods, from 99th to 90th? Say, a reading RIT score that in FA15 on the 2-5 then went up a few points in SP16, then dropped 1 point below FA15 score when moved to the 6+ test. Up only 1 point in WI17 and stayed same SP17, resulting in 1 point growth for the whole year, but the same RIT score as FA15? The kid read over 120 books this year (made a list). The math score recovered from the 6+ switch, but had a bigger drop and then over 10 points growth this year, to 14 points higher than FA15. Both subjects were in the 99th percentile on the statewide grade level test. Ride it out, or ask someone about it? Lit teacher indicated it was difficult to keep him challenged in class.

If he's already at the top of the test (which was likely the case in year one, when it was the 2-5 test), then negligible change, or even a slight decrease, is not surprising. A slight decrease on changing to the new level is also not strange. He's still near the top of the norms on the 6+, so there's not much space to move up.

Math is different from reading in the respect that exposure to more challenging skills and concepts is generally controlled by grade-level curriculum, while reading comprehension is mostly more of the same once you pass the fourth grade reading level, and consequently more a function of practice and native cognition than instruction. So he doesn't need to be taught reading to fly ahead (and top out the sensitivity/range of the test), but does need to be taught at least some math.

Keep in mind that the MAP has a standard test error that runs approximately +/- 3 points. When kids get somewhere in the neighborhood of the high 220s, maybe low 230s, on their reading test that test error also matches their expected growth for the year. At that level, I tell parents that MAP is very helpful for knowing what a student is ready to learn and is less helpful about showing actual growth.

I would push teachers to see how they're using the data. I routinely used MAP to teach upper elementary kids allegory, allusion, extended metaphors, etc that just aren't in the curriculum for kids that young.

I guess it just seems odd that it's nearly the same RIT as the beginning of almost two years ago, so the percentile keeps dropping; 90th percentile doesn't seem near the top on the 6+ (I guess that's relative; it equates a respectable 80th percentile 2-3 grades above). I suppose my feeling disappointed about the lack of honors/GT/differentiation in literacy in middle school is reinforced by a stagnant number, perhaps unfairly.

Think of this another way. If you look at the student growth norms, you will see that an eleventh grader with a RIT of 222 (considered average), is expected to post less than a point of growth over the course of the year. (Actually, the norms have such a student dropping slightly.) Clearly, your child is scoring at least that high, and has been for two years. At this point, challenging instruction might be expected to be challenging for a late secondary student. Accelerated middle school just may not be enough.

Those scales are not correct. My son is a 5th grader and took the Math MAP 2-5 and got a 285. I work in education and have proctored the MAP and have access to our district data. We have a few others in our district on the same test that are over 260. So I don't trust that google document.

Agreed. The document footer states it was last updated July 5, 2012; It is 5 years old.

For those who are interested in the current max score, this note from NWEA states that the maximum valid scores (across the whole grade range) are 350 or 320, depending on which battery is administered. (Range from 100-350.) Scores above the maximum can be recorded, but will be invalidated by the system. The 2015 norms document, referenced there, also notes that the 99th %ile for 11th grade is 285 for math, and about 260 for reading and language, which suggests that scores above those ranges are unlikely to add meaningful normative information.

ETA: Oh, and the 99th percentile in math for the algebra II end-of-course exam is 291.

https://community.nwea.org/docs/DOC-1651

MAP K-2 (aka MPG) also has hard RIT ceilings of 230 for math, and 220 for reading.

https://community.nwea.org/docs/DOC-1496

I'd like to know at what score you move to the 6+ on math? It's easy to find all over the internet when to move to the 2-5, but I can't find anything stating when to move to 6+ or what the max score is on the 2-5. DS got a 239 and will likely improve slightly over the summer. Will the 2-5 still be the right test for him in the fall? Is there any difference other than higher level questions being available? If that is the only difference, why have two separate tests? Since the school requires this testing 3x per year I want to at least make sure that the data is useful to us!

Guidance doc on transitioning from 2-5 to 6+: fall score of 231+ and exposure to 6th grade standards. The recommendation is that a fall score of 231+ should lead to instruction in 6th grade standards and transition to the 6+ test for future tests. The document reports an ~10 point drop from spring 2-5 to fall 6+ testing for the highest performers (>90th %ile), which would suggest that the 2-5 would still be the appropriate test for him in the fall, but that the 6+ would be the correct test for subsequent measurements.

https://www.nwea.org/content/upload...ath-6-plus-Transition-Guidance-MAY15.pdf

If you look at page 5, there is a comparison of common core strands assessed on the respective tests, which, you'll note, includes notable differences.

DD7 (just finished second grade, skipping to fourth) and DD8 (just finished third grade) scored 231 and 230 on their spring math MAP, respectively.

I expect them to grow more over the summer than during the school year because they have more time to dig into the math they're passionate about.

According to this, they should still take the 2-5 version in the fall? And then we reevaluate which test to take in winter based on their fall score?

Yes. It also suggests that they should have access to more advanced math instruction (grade six) next year if they continue to score this high. Of course, that instruction could take place outside of school, too.

Thank you aeh. It will work out well to just have him take the 2-5 in the fall and then talk about transitioning to the 6+ when we get those results.

Reading over the info on page 5, it looks like the 6+ would be a better measure because DS is working in a lot of the areas covered by the 6+ and will likely make significant progress in those areas over the summer. I wish that the results would correlate to actual grade levels, not just give %ile ranks. The %iles are especially useless when 99th %ile is so far below the score DS got. The teachers don't seem to quite know what the scores mean either. Certainly no one is willing to look at DS's MAP score and actually base his math instruction off of it. Which makes me wonder why he has to take the test to begin with?

Thanks!

We haven't done much sixth grade stuff yet.

The school uses Singapore. They finished 4A together last school year. They also have finished grade 5 on ALEKS.

We are doing Beast Academy 4A and 4B this summer, and they attend math club/team.

They'll be in the same class next year, with an excellent teacher who is willing to push them. Looking ahead at the Singapore placement tests, I am thinking that they will be able to jump into 5B in the fall. I hope they can do the Singapore workbooks two days a week and work on BA on the other days. I feel like that will keep them learning and challenged without just racing through the core as fast as possible, while still placating the principal that they're getting the district's chosen curriculum.

Then the next year, they should be adequately prepared to start AOPS prealgebra as fifth graders.

Right there with you with DD this year... Hopeful that next year will be better.

In most districts, MAP is used for universal screening and progress monitoring of low and at risk performers. Universal screening obviously means every student must be tested, even those clearly not at risk. Any benefit that accrues to high performers often is incidental. Its use for access to higher level programs is data-driven only at a fairly low cut score of 90th %ile.

Remember that most of the children we discuss on this forum are singularities in their schools. MAP is quite useful for the vast majority of students. From the school's standpoint, there are equity issues any time one starts exempting any category of student from an universal screening measure. Also, pulling out the extremely high performers may skew the norms over the long term, since NWEA uses actual test takers to develop future norms.

To your actual point regarding using available data to inform instruction: yes, it would be optimal if these data affected placement. One should also note, though, that schools do experience gaps between how students test, and how they perform in classes. These gaps may occur for various reasons, but one of them is that group standardized testing doesn't measure all the skills needed to be successful in a course of the indicated grade level. (Many of these are not academic skills, but soft skills.) Schools are often afraid of misplacing a student based solely on test scores, resulting in negative outcomes for both student and school, as nearly every school has experienced this at some point. Reading and language in particular can be challenging, as it is quite difficult to get a good measure of writing skill from a computerized multiple choice exam, yet writing is a huge part of language arts classes.

if you use 230 as the point to transition to 6+ and instruction should be received at that level, ds would have been taking 6th grade math in 2nd grade (and he actually did test int 5th grade math while in 1st grade through mathnasium). We finally had him switch to 6plus MAP in spring of 4th grade when his scores were consistently in the high 250's. He is now entering 6th grade and wrapping up algebra I online this summer. The school provided Alek's after we showed them his achievement test results (WIAT) in January.

MAP is pretty useless to us at this point.

It seems to me the older the child gets the less useful MAP is. I couldn't agree with you more that standardized test certainly doesn't equate to success in a class. An example my daughter was in a Algebra 2 class in eighth grade with kids that were 99% MAP scores. She's going into tenth grade now an now some are taking Calc BC, Calc AB and Trig/Calc A this upcoming year. My point is a MAP at this point is meaningless.

OP here. We just received DS8's most recent MAP score. He scored 240 in math and 225 in reading. The points made by other posters last year were valid. It is probably a better practice to compare MAP progress year by year, instead of test by test.

Again, thank you for all your input.

I think that MAP scores become fairly meaningless for gifted kids somewhere in middle elementary.