Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment MAP tests

I did see mention of a short form and a long form at the A.C.C.E.S Inc website but I don't recall being given a choice on the registration form as to which we wanted. I will call tomorrow.

Inky - what's your opinion on testing a bright 4th grader w/ the 2-5 test? He missed DYS numbers on the Explore this year by 2points (he had composite, reading, and if science had another 2 points) to give you an idea of his level.

ALso, I haven't read the links you posted above, time to cook dinner, but I wonder what is the use of this short version if it can't be used to track progress? I wanted the details about specifics areas in math, reading, lang arts to focus on.

Dazey (more confuzed than ever it seems)

dottie,

What recent ceilings are you referring to?

Thanks,
Dazey

From Inky's list:

How do I know which test I should give a student?
Several tests are available for administration in each subject area. It is important that teachers understand the distinctions between these tests in order to correctly select a test for a specific student. For each subject, there are Survey w/ Goals tests and Survey tests. Even though the names of these tests are similar, the end results of each are very different. The Survey w/ Goals test is the longer form of the test (between 42 and 64 items) and is the primary test given in the fall and the spring. This test will report not only an overall RIT score at the end, but it will also report how a student performed on each of the goal areas on the test; for example, Computation or Geometry. This gives teachers more data in order to make instructional decisions about a particular student or about an entire class.

The Survey test is a short test (20 items) that will simply survey the domain of a subject area. This test will only report an overall RIT score at the end. It is primarily given as an intake test when a student enters the district or as a monitoring tool mid-year to determine how a student is progressing.
Teacher Handbook www.nwea.org 1

Other differences in the tests refer to grade level; for example, 2-5 and 6+. Be sure to review all of the choices and, as a district, select the test appropriate to the grade level of the student being tested. These tests have some important differences in the types of items that can be selected in order to build each student a unique test. The chart below, Guidelines for Choosing the Correct Test􏰀, is helpful in determining the correct test for a student.
Guidelines for Choosing the Correct Test



In the chart, the Survey takes 30min and the goals test takes 65min. The Goals test has twice as many questions.

Ah ok, I get it now. I'm going to call ACCES in the AM and see if I can get him changed to the goals test. I'll be incredibly disappointed if not. The survey was perfect for my 1st grader however since he is so young and the 20min was about his limit.

Frustrating....nothing can ever be simple.....

Dazey

NJMom, where did you see that the survey can't be used for tracking achievement?

In the table, they had "Use to measure growth in student achievement?" and yes for both the survey tests and the survey w/ goals tests.

Like Dottie, I'd also try to have your 4th grader tested on the 6+ test. The main reason is that the growth information will be the most useful for you over the next few years. I'd be more comfortable comparing growth on the same test instead of one where the ceiling issue could be coming into play. I saw it with DD8 when she went from P-MAP to the 2-5 this year and I had to recalibrate.

I also think that PDF you posted earlier has goal information.
http://www.acces-inc.com/testing/files/Sample%20Test%20Results.pdf
See the part that says "mathematics goals performance" with Hi, Avg, Lo?

yep, I saw that and saw similar info in one of the links you posted. In that same document it had a different page that broke each RIT score into sub-scores for each area in Math for example. I'll call in the AM and report back.

Dazey,

I was reading the chart rather quickly, so perhaps I misinterpreted. There is another question that reads "Use to retest for achievement level tests." That one said "Not appropriate."

Now that I see the line that you mentioned, I'm not sure what the one above really means.

At any rate, I'll be interested to hear what ACCES says. It may be that only the short version is available to homeschoolers.

Also, when I looked at the RIT chart that has the sample questions that kids should be able to answer at each score level, it did seem to mesh reasonably well with the questions that I saw from the Language Test. Which brings up another point: on the form from ACCES, the Language Test doesn't list tests for 2-6 and 6+. I'm wondering if there IS only one level of Language test.

Perplexing, isn't it? I'm glad that it wasn't expensive.

Keep us posted on what you find out.

I think it's talking about retesting if the teacher didn't think the student performed up to his potential (see page 12):
http://www.nwea.org/sites/www.nwea.org/files/resources/Teacher%20Handbook.pdf
Yikes, it can run out of items in the test bank.

Hope ACCES is willing to make the change. I didn't have any luck with the public school last year trying to get DD to use the 2-5 instead of the P-MAP for first grade.

I don't know what that means either.

If you read the testing instructions, it says "If they are taking the Goals Survey Test, it takes 2 to 3 hours to complete" so it sounds like it is possible to take the Goals survey test.

It's quite likely that they expect, that most kids would test near the average for based on the grade levels we put for our kids, they automatically chose the 2-5 test. I'm wondering what would happen if we just chose the Survey Goals test. When you log in, those are listed as well as the Survey tests.