Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment NWEA scores

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.