It has been a while since I have last been on here, but I do have some updates to bring. (These are pretty outdated test score drops, but I just remembered this site and thought I'd bring the questions here). You might remember DD14 who scored at 276 math, 242 Science, and 254 Reading in 7th grade (by the way, these scores were pretty consistent throughout 7th Grade) on the MAP test. Unfortunately, in her first 8th grade MAP tests (which, for some reason were taken in February), Math went down 1 point, Reading went up 1, and Science went from 242 to 226! I don't know what to think about this.. She mentioned that the teachers had all of the students set a goal for themselves on the test, and the teacher told her to set her goal for 250 because the score was already so phenomenal. (according to the teacher, 250 was the ceiling). Unfortunately, she missed that by quite a lot, and as you can imagine, she was quite disappointed by that score. (I don't blame her, with the teachers putting pressure like that) She has always been quite good at science- the teacher has given her permission to correct her in class if she gets something wrong. Personally, I think that if she can get the score back up next time she takes the test, then it will just be forgotten- but I can't think of how devastated DD will be if she *doesn't* get it back up.
I don't think the score fluctuation is a big concern. It certainly will happen given the test format.
For example, in math, your problems get harder if you answer them correctly; and will get easier if your answer is wrong. The final score depends on the number of rights and wrongs at each level of difficulty. However, "hard", "easy" are quite subjective, especially for science.
Your DD has good scores. Do not read too much into a test score, especially the multiple choice ones. They are geared towards "one minute solution" problems, probably the reason that our Harvard/Yale graduated presidents do not understand complicated world problems.
the teachers had all of the students set a goal for themselves on the test, and the teacher told her to set her goal for 250 because the score was already so phenomenal. (according to the teacher, 250 was the ceiling).
Nothing like setting the test ceiling as a goal to drive unhealthy perfectionism.
I'd talk to DD about looking at other ways to measure her growth in science that a multiple choice test can't capture. Even NWEA states not to rely on a single RIT score.
http://www.nwea.org/support/article/1328 Furthermore, no less than three points of data should ever be used to make important decisions.
F: Negative Expected Growth for High Achievers One of the most disturbing aspects of the precision and accuracy problems of MAP testing is that NWEA's data clearly shows that negative growth is normal for high achievers.
In this expected growth graph, we can see that growth can only be precisely measured for the lowest performing students. Decline is the norm for high scoring students.
This strongly suggests that using MAP testing actually promotes instructional methods that do more harm than good for high achieving students. This result should discourage the use of MAP testing for all above average students.
I don't agree with their conclusions but the negative growth in high achieving students does need to be taken into account.
I agree with what everyone else has said so far, and I particularly think the quote about about high achievers is interesting. Anecdotally, in the school in which I volunteer, I became aware that, while almost every child in my DD's class increased their MAP scores last year from fall to winter to spring, the 5 highest achievers either held their scores to the same number or decreased their scores slightly. This included my DD. And this was just in 2nd grade. I would imagine that as the children's grade levels rise, so would the difficulty in continuing to see a rise in their scores. I don't know why that is, exactly, but it is something I've seen. Have other people seen this with their kids as well?
My understanding is that MAP scores really aren't much use at the high end by middle school -- once my kid had scores at the 11th grade level or so, I gave up expecting useful information from them.
Which version of the MAP are the second-graders using? If it's the MAP for Primary Grades, naturally they'd be hitting ceilings.