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Hi there, I'm new so I'm hoping that I'm posting in the right area My 10 year old (5th grade) will be going into middle school next year and I am trying to find the right placement for him in math. The GT program here is pretty unhelpful, but after months of asking, I finally got the GT teacher to proctor a 6th grade NWEA math assessment to see if it helps us to figure out where he should start in math in middle school. He scored a 247. I've looked the score up and it is very high for a 5th grader and is also in the 95th percentile for end-of-the-year 6th graders. I have been "homeschooling" him in math for this last year since he had progressed past what his elementary school could provide - he is doing Thinkwell 7th-8th grade math online and working his way through a Pre-Algebra Art of Problem Solving textbook. He is also part of CTY and has done math classes through them in the past. What I would like to know is whether a 7th grade pre-algebra class will be an advanced enough placement for him next year, of if I should try to fight to get him into the 8th grade Algebra class. The school is resistant to acceleration so my guess is that getting a 7th grade placement for him as a 6th grader will be the best I can do. I don't know enough about how the NWEA math scores are interpreted to tell if he is performing around the level of an entering 7th grader or entering 8th grader as far as math goes.

Thanks!!
Melisa

According to NWEA's comparative data placement guide, his 247 would be a recommended placement for Geometry (though just barely.) His score in 5th grade would put him at the top of the high achieving group for 6th grade.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nwea.org%2Fsites%2Fwww.nwea.org%2Ffiles%2Fresources%2FComparative%2520Data.pdf

Thanks so much for the link, that will be very useful. We are in a rural area and I feel like the math classes are a bit "behind" national standards as it is. The 7th grade math class would be pre-algebra, 8th grade is Algebra 1 and they offer Geometry in 9th grade here. As an entering 6th grader, I am thinking that the 8th grade Algebra 1 class would probably be the best fit - and according to this document, it seems that a score of 235 would indicate readiness for this, correct? So his score of 247 should put him well in the range of being considered ready for Algebra 1. I just want to make sure I am understanding this fully before I bring it up at a meeting

Thank you SO much!
Melisa

Definitely the 247 should qualify him for Algebra 1. If they are hesitant to go ahead, ask if he can take the end of the year Pre-Algebra test and that if he gets 80% or better, he be moved immediately to Algebra 1. If he scores 60-80%, I would ask for compacting of the sections that he did not score well on over the summer, then Algebra 1 in the new year.

Thanks so much! That gives me a lot more confidence asking for Algebra 1 for him when we go in for a meeting. There is only one 8th grade Algebra class at the middle school here, and a high school math teacher comes over to teach it. That kind of gives you an idea of the population - a child like my son is highly unusual here and people just don't know what to do with him, so I've found acceleration to be the only solution. They don't like the scheduling headache that I am causing them, and a big excuse that I am hearing against acceleration is that "he will be overwhelmed with the transition to middle school enough without adding an advanced math class to it." My thought is that taking a math class that is the equivalent of what he studied 2 years previously would be much more of a problem to adjust to than one that is at the right level.

Thanks so much for all of your help!
Melisa

Hmmmm. Everyone could definitely be right, and perhaps I should be rethinking my placement for my daughter. She scored a 253 in the beginning of 5th grade this year on her NWEA MAP testing (I think that's the same test you are talking about....we usually call it, "MAP" test), which is very similar to your situation.

First thing, there are updated norms for the MAP tests, and they considerably lower the percentiles. See this link: http://www.nwea.org/sites/www.nwea.org/files/resources/NWEA_2011_RIT_Scale_Norms.pdf
A 247 in math in spring of 5th grade is 96% for 5th grade, and 91% for 6th graders, 82% for 7th graders and 76% for 8th graders. Remember that these are national norms, that include children from the lowest performing schools in the country, so if your school district is higher performing, your child would be at a much lower percentile if ranked just in your own community.

So I am not sure I would recommend skipping to the 8th grade algebra class. I'm not sure it's awful to be in the 90%+ of your classmates.

Another thing about NWEA MAP testing--somewhere I read that the accuracy drops off considerably when you get to the higher numbers. If someone gets a little lucky and answers one of the hard problems towards the end right, even if a guess, it can skew the numbers up significantly.

Yes, since you've chosen to go ahead and teach a lot of the math that is part of the curriculum, at home, he will end up doing some repetition. But it might be better for him to skip at most one grade of math, and use your time at home for other things than teaching what they will teach at school. Instead, you can focus on more interesting, non-curriculum math. Things like competition math problem solving, or special projects on cool things like Fibonacci numbers, explorations on infinity, the 4th dimension, etc, etc.

For me, with my daughter having the 253 in September of 5th grade (I assume it will be a little higher when they retest for spring numbers this month), she'll just be skipping 6th grade math, and will be doing Pre-Algebra with the 7th graders in the fall when she enters middle school as a 6th grader. As a middle schooler, there are so many new, challenging, exciting things that happen (woodshop! home ec, switching classes, puberty, new clusters, longer research papers, engineering projects, real lab science, crazy social situations, etc etc) I think it's okay to reinforce some math, and seek totally different math challenges as time permits.

Sorry, don't mean to be a downer.....by all means, no one knows your situation better than you. But I thought I'd just provide a counterpoint. No matter what you choose, I hope he enjoys it! Good luck!

I don't want him to skip 8th grade Algebra 1 at all, just pre-algebra since he is already doing that right now. I'd like for him to take 8th grade Algebra in the fall as a 6th grader. As far as the MAPS test goes - the one that he took yesterday was proctored by the GT teacher because it is at a higher level than his normal 5th grade assessment. It is called the 6+ Mathematics Survey with Goals. My son said that it was longer than his "regular" MAPS tests, so my guess is that it is a slightly different assessment done by the same company. But someone else here might know a lot more about it than I do!

I was just reading the form in the link that you posted, and I think that it is normed on Primary grades where perhaps the one my son took is normed on 6th grade and up?

Did the GT teacher who proctored the test for your ds have any advice re which math class to place him in?

I'm not familiar with MAP testing, but fwiw I would think with math it would be fairly straightforward to compare the curriculum he's already learned at home vs the curriculum taught at your middle school. I'd look at the course title more than what grade it's taught at - for instance, in our school district typical kids take a 7th grade math course in 7th, pre-algebra in 8th, algebra in 9th, geometry in 10th. Honors track kids take pre-algebra in 7th, algebra in 8th, etc. Gifted program kids who have subject-accelerated take the same curriculum but earlier. If you look at the curriculum for pre-algebra your ds has mastered this year in homeschool and compare it to the school district's pre-algebra curriculum, are they comparable or are their holes? If there are holes, can you focus on making up those areas during the rest of this school year? If there aren't large gaps and if you feel he's confident in what he's learned in pre-algebra, I'd advocate for putting him directly into algebra. I wouldn't put him in geometry (which I think one poster above suggested?) - he needs algebra first.

Back to the MAP scores, I find the percentiles a little tricky when it comes to math curriculum (but again, I'm not familiar with MAP testing so I may be just clueless!). The thing I think is tricky is they are fitting a score into a percentile of students in grade 7 or grade 8 or grade whatever... but typically once kids get into middle school not everyone takes the same level of math course in each grade... so I'm not sure how you can relate the percentiles to actual course placement.

polarbear

ps - I just remembered that there is a test called an "Algebra Readiness Test" that is offered in our school district, as well as (I think) many other school districts in the US - I'm sorry I can't remember the name of it at the moment! It is used in our district to screen which kids go into algebra in 8th vs waiting until 9th, and also used to screen kids going into pre-algebra in 6th which here is considered to be 2 years ahead of grade level. I'll try to find out the name of it - it might not be something available where you're at, but if it is, it might be useful since you are specifically looking at pre-algebra vs algebra.

The RIT scores are continuous, so if he took the 6+ test, the RIT score you have is still the same on the percentiles chart.

As for whether or not it's better to be in the top 10% of your class and repeat, it depends on what you want for your child. I am a huge fan of Richard Rusczyk. He discusses the tyranny of the 100% and that if you are consistently the smartest person in the room, you may be in the wrong room. Solid math is built by problem solving and working on a challenge, not by doing work from two years ago just to adjust easily.

http://mathprize.atfoundation.org/archive/2009/rusczyk


ETA: PolarBear- I wasn't suggesting he should go to Geometry. That is the NWEA recommended placement for a student with his RIT score. I don't think skipping Algebra would be in his best interest. Even if he can guess through the NWEA problems by solving the problems, his score isn't staggeringly into Geometry and it would probably be a struggle.