We just go back from our 2nd grader school conf. While, we know he is bright (WISC-IV 135 / HIgh score in VSI 148 and low score of 97 on PSI), his teacher refuses to see that he is gifted. He is in a regular classroom and we are trying to move him to the magnet program next year. The final straw was today when she shared his winter NWEA scores: reading 211 and math 218. Fall he was in the 98th % and she said his reading was still at that but she was surprised with his math. In fact, she had never had a student with such a high score. So rather than go with that score, she decided to give him some random 3rd and 4th grade math tests. She showed us all the his wrong answers and said that proved he wasn't gifted (especially since she has not seen him perform at a gifted level in her classroom). We are really upset because she has a say if he gets into the magnet program (there are only 24 spots for 8 elementary schools). My question is how accurate is the NWEA?

Thanks!

Since they keep going until the student gets a certain percentage wrong I think they are pretty accurate. My DDs school has used them as support of the fact that she is gt.
Giving your son random 3rd and 4th grade tests and then criticizing his scores is really mean and I think she should be reported to the administration for that. It is unprofessional as well, just because a child is gt doesn't mean they know things at first sight, or would perform well if they knew they were taking a test that the teacher felt they would do poorly on to begin with.

Grrrr! How frustrating for you.

Here's a whole section about NWEA accuracy and comparisons to other measures.

http://www.nwea.org/assessments/researchbased.asp

I did my own comparison with DD6's NWEA MAP scores and out of level Stanford Achievement Test. Her +1GL Fall MAP and +1GL Stanford scores gave identical percentiles for math and reading.

You may want to look in terms of his growth too. It sounds like he had huge growth from Fall to Winter. Do you have his past NWEA MAP scores to show how he's moving up the above grade level percentiles too? You could make a table showing his GL percentiles, +1 GL percentiles, and +2GL percentiles over time.

I looked up his above GL percentiles here on page 143:
http://pickens.it.schoolfusion.us/m...ssionid=14d1e9266e4482d198ebc39c6e6bc9c3

That Math RIT score give GL 99%, +1GL (3rd) is 96%, +2GL is 79%, and +3 GL is 54%.

Another point you could make is that Johns Hopkins CTY uses 95% NWEA MAP scores as an eligibility guideline for their Talent Search. I don't think they would accept random 3rd and 4th grade math tests.

http://cty.jhu.edu/ts/tests.html

Of course you have to be careful how you present this if she's intent on proving he's not gifted. You could say, "Have you considered his above grade level percentiles? Here's what I saw when I looked into it more."

Do you have the Student Report that shows the graph of your son's growth compared to the district and national norms? The picture of the "gap" may help too.

Good luck! We had a similar issue earlier this year, except it went a bit further because the teacher had been given bad norms. The scores were used against DD6 being gifted when they thought she scored low. When we showed the norms were bad and she scored high, the story switched to "NWEA MAP is only used to guide instruction and not for identifying gifted." Now it seems to be worked out with the teacher at least.

Thanks all for the advise. His math fall score was 201 and then it went up to 218 (median is 186) and for reading it was 204/fall and 211/winter (median 186). While she did not share the specific %, we can only assume it was beyond the 98% that he had in math and reading in the fall. We will work on some of your ideas to present to his teacher and principle. We just would like the opportunity to be considered for the magnet program not a road block from his teacher.

If you go in here and look at the data, you can see that was a huge jump in math. A child at the 2nd grade 98% with a Fall Math RIT of 202 jumps to 209 in the Winter (7 points). Your son jumped 17 points!

http://pickens.it.schoolfusion.us/m...ssionid=14d1e9266e4482d198ebc39c6e6bc9c3

I know this is an old post but I would love to know your outcome- I have a VERY similar situation- My 7 year old 2nd grader went from 197 math in Fall to 218 in winter (one subtest was 221)and from 191 to 206 in Reading.
I thought at the time the original tests seemed low but it was really his first time taking standardized tests- we are new to the school and he can be quite a trouble maker- we had a really bad experience with a Montessori school that basically wasted a year of his education so he walked into the public school and got a big shock. In Fall missed the GT program by 1% point(Map 95%- he was 94% in Math) and his other tests were not indicative of Gifted at the time- but said they would watch him and retest in the spring. Now that he is in the 99%+ for Math I am wondering if they really need to retest him.
We found out he had severe sleep apnea and had surgery over Thanksgiving- he is sleeping now and obviously did a lot better on the tests in Winter- more in line what I expected. He is still a behavior problem- I tell them GIVE HIM HARDER work when ever he gives them trouble. My parent teacher conference is in 2 weeks so I am trying to decide my approach.
Would love to hear a great success story from you!
Brandy

Interesting that they are discrediting the MAP scores. Our school only gave credit to DS's MAP score and discounted his WISC and WIAT instead. Because psychologists can be biased :-) But his MAP scores were literally off the charts- 199 in math in fall 1st grade and a less impressive 189 in reading. These were what helped us get him moved to 2nd grade.

They told us to expect a dip when he moved to 2nd in the scores. However, he just scored a 209 in reading... so evidently the "dip" isn't reality. We don't know what he got in math or language usage yet since they haven't finished testing. (BTW- our school has the 2nd grade take the MAP not P-MAP which I guess is not common.)

Our school also gives the MAP in 2nd grade and P-MAP in K/1st.

This link may be useful for discussing the MAP score and level of challenge for the student.
http://www.powayusd.com/projects/EdTechcentral/lladder/Default.asp

Inky that's a fantastic link! I swear you are the guru of NWEA! You always know what's up and have the best research!

Glad you found it useful and thanks for the positive feedback. I've been surprised that the most useful MAP info has been from other than the official NWEA website. Yay for Google!

Found this today and thought of gifted students who are outside the norm. Wish they gave more info than just this little teaser.

http://community.nwea.org/node/228

Inky- thank you! this link was exactly what I am looking for! I called the NWEA yesterday and all they told me was the teacher could tell me the level that my child was capable of. Not quite the answer I was looking for, since I am trying to push them for harder work for my son!

Thanks again!!
Brandy

Just looking into the MAP scores and found this post. Just came home from my son's 3rd grade conference. He scored a 222 on his MAP-R in October, is above grade level in math and reading by 1-2 grades(since K)and has tested 99% on every category on 2nd grade standardized tests. He also scored high in Inview Analogies, Quant Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning. He is otherwise a socially normal kid. He has unique interests, is very intellectual and is considered very bright. We think he should go to the gifted center. He gets bored in the regular class. His teachers are not so sure, based on him being well rounded. What to do?

Why would being well rounded be a reason not to go to the gifted center? Did the teachers explain this more? If he's bored in the regular class it seems worth trying out the gifted center. Here's a link to an article called "What a Child Doesn't Learn..." by Tracy Ingram. It may help you decide.
http://www.portage.k12.in.us/160720...597/pdfs/April/Whatachilddoesntlearn.pdf

Throwing this in here for our MAP expert- Inky help!

Just had DS's conference yesterday and I was disappointed his math and language usage scores have gone down a couple of points. They blamed this on summer... though the kids had been in school 8 weeks when they took the test so that was a little frustrating!

One thing the teacher said was that the MAP test they use is capped at 230? He's in 3rd grade and it's not P-MAP. Is this something the school did or does that make sense normally? She also said the test is totally different from 2nd to 3rd so you can't compare scores. However, I know they didn't take P-MAP last year, they took the regular one (the one you read yourself). Does she have a clue what she's talking about?

I'm wondering how DS would ever make his growth goal of 10 points this year with a cap of 230 because his reading score was 222.

I wouldn't worry too much about the fall scores being a couple points lower than last spring. If his winter scores also come back lower I'd talk to the teacher about making a plan for him to reach his growth goal by spring.

I haven't heard of a 230 cap and it seems like that would defeat the purpose of high performing students taking the test if it's capped like that. Maybe she meant the school just caps the maximum growth goal for a 3rd grader at 230?

It also seems odd that she's saying you can't compare scores between 2nd and 3rd grade since that's the whole point of the RIT scale. Bottom line, I'm skeptical about her information.

Thank you! I'm not too worried about his score going down. But her attitude about it going down worried me! She was very flippant about it and didn't even know it had gone down because she never looked at last year's scores.

I don't understand the cap so I'm going to ask her about it. She said his growth goal was 10 pts by spring. But if he can't make his goal due to the cap, I don't really get it!

I appreciate your help- so sad that you know more than the teacher who is supposed to use this to design her entire curriculum!

Some of that flippant attitude may stem from teachers' frustration with NCLB and the emphasis on multiple choice testing. I'm learning to preface any MAP discussions at school with "I know this is just one test and like a snapshot it doesn't capture the complete picture." Acknowledging that from the start has helped me have more productive conversations with the teachers about MAP and how the results fit with the rest of what they're seeing in class. It's good if you can get on the same page about the growth goal but of course there is so much more that should go into the curriculum than can be captured with MAP. Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Inky- this is a Charter that willingly chooses to use MAP. It's not our state standardized testing or related to NCLB. They tout it as their very special way of knowing the exact "just right" level for each student. They pay for it and they are in theory, reviewing the scores and designing curriculum for the classroom based on scores 3x a year.

Ooohhhh, now I understand your expectation that the teacher would be on top of this.

Yep, that's about how my face looked during the whole conference!

My DS8 took MAP tests in school twice a year. His scores were off the chart since 1st grade and improved consistently. But when I asked about the interpretation about the scores, the teacher only copy&paste the blah blah and refused to discuss anything further. I tried to keep cool in the conference since I knew it was kind of waste of time if the teacher considered it as "non-issue" and did not prepare to talk about it. Not until a new principal came, and he noticed that my DS did not even fit the 4th grade gifted math classroom with his MAP math at 260 above 99percentile at 6th grade. So he quickly arranged a meeting with the middle school principal and now DS goes to 6th gifted math class in the early morning and the big kids would escort DS back to elementary just in time to start his regular classes.

Yippee! Wow erich, what a great experience. I hope your son enjoys the academics and social interactions.
Smiles,
Grinity