FCISD Academic Affairs
September 8, 2021
Why NWEA MAP Testing?
Students across the district have been engaging in the Beginning-of-the-Year (BOY) NWEA MAP testing.
This is our second year to give NWEA MAP, and we are continuing to learn more about the assessment and how it can help us strengthen instructional practice and grow students each year.
As a Collegiate Edu-Nation District, we have set a goal that 75% of students will meet at or above their projected RIT score on MAP in Reading and Math.
This assessment serves a very important purpose in helping us understand skills that students have and need in order to meet their individual growth for year.
MAP is very different from STAAR and serves a different purpose.
Here are a few reasons why MAP is important to our students, teachers, and district as a whole:
- Current accountability ratings and cut-points are set based on a bell curve model using STAAR results.
- MAP results are based on the individual student's performance in comparison to other students across the nation that score at the same level. (Norm-referenced)
- STAAR is summative and criterion based. (We only truly get results after school is out and instruction is over for the year.)
- MAP is an adaptive assessment and is designed to help educators design/drive instruction to impact individual student growth throughout the year. (We have BOY, MOY, and EOY data to gauge what skills a student is ready for instructionally or what skill gaps need to be addressed as we teach the TEKS throughout the year.)
- MAP is a strong predictor of STAAR/ACT/SAT performance. Students meeting or exceeding their growth projection normally also meet, or exceed their STAAR/ACT/SAT performance. (Meeting one year's worth of growth will not change a student from DNM to Approaches, Approaches to Meets, or Meets to Masters...exceeding their growth projection does.)
- Both assessments have a place in our accountability, but as a CEN district, a future option is to be able to utilize MAP as a possible accountability measure instead of relying totally on STAAR assessments.
- Making sure students and parents know results and growth projections is critical! We will be working on improving our communication and reporting as we move forward!
- Setting goals with students based on the BOY data is IMPERATIVE to get them invested in their own learning and growth.
Your campus will be going over NWEA MAP reports with you on Monday, September 27th in order to utilize the results to help your target student needs and inform instruction and acceleration needs.
What is our WHY?
We are dedicated to education, committed to excellence.
Through our partnership with CEN, FCISD strives for
- a vision of college and career focus to break generational poverty,
- provide affordable education and high expectations for educational attainment, and
- transform educator development to strengthen a spirit of innovation in educational best practice and advance rural school research, faculty preparation, reward, and professional development.