I would like to begin this blogpost by emphasizing the importance of managing our perspective on what the MAP test is and what the MAP reports represent. Any given MAP test provides a snapshot of a student’s academic achievement in a certain area. We want to ensure students are making progress in their education, but how can we measure their academic performance and growth? At Mundo Verde, the academic report provides parents/caregivers with picture of how the student is performing in the classroom, the final products of expeditions provide parents/caregivers with a sense of how a student is doing when applying concepts and standards to a real-world situation, and the MAP test allows us to have a uniformed look of student performance based on testing. Together, these three areas give us a more complete answer to the question: How is my child doing?
Nonetheless, the MAP test, of course, is important. It gives us a sense of how our students compare to students around the country in English Reading and Mathematics. In addition, it allows us to forecast how students will perform on DC CAPE (previously known as PARCC.) The MAP blog post is one of Mundo Verde’s ways to increase transparency and foster community collaboration on academic outcomes. Few schools (if any) share this level of information on their MAP results, most only provide individual student reports. We hope this blog provides parents/caregivers with insight into our work as educators, coaches, and school leaders.
Let’s start with the basics. The MAP Growth Assessment seeks to measure student progress in different subjects. I use the word “seeks” because it is really important for everyone in the Mundo Verde community to understand that 1) every assessment provides a picture of one aspect of student performance, and that 2) every assessment uses statistical instruments to measure how the student is performing. This is why you see a “standard error” in your child’s MAP report. Mundo Verde tests students in English Reading, Spanish Reading, and Mathematics in grades 1st through 5th. Students in Kinder take Spanish Reading and Mathematics.
This blogspot is complementary to the video shared with parents/caregivers on how to read MAP reports shared via the family bulletin a couple months ago. Here is the video in case you missed it. This video also provides some useful strategies on how to use the MAP reports constructively to inform how to best support students.
Technical points to keep in mind when looking at the graphs below:
The norm that NWEA MAP uses is from 2020. In order to build that norm they used tests from the previous five years. In other words, the norm was based on pre-pandemic data and the new norm is scheduled to be released in 2025.
We want the percentage of students performing in the 60th percentile or higher to be as high as possible. While NWEA defines "proficient" as students in the 40th-70th percentile and "advanced" as students in the 70th-99th percentile, we know that students in the 60th percentile or higher in MAP have a higher chance of earning a score of 4 or a 5 in CAPE, formerly known as PARCC (meeting and exceeding expectations respectively.) For more information on the name change of PARCC to CAPE click here.
The 3rd quartile (50th-74th percentile) and 4th quartile (75th to 99th percentile) represent the percentage of students who are performing above the national mean. So we want those bars (gray and blue in the graphs below) to be as large as possible as well.
For the sake of staying disciplined with this analysis, we will focus on the results of English Reading and Mathematics. While the Spanish Reading results are important, NWEA has a “user norm” that is NOT representative of the nation. More on this here. You will see a separate piece on the measures of Spanish proficiency at Mundo Verde in which we delve deep into the Spanish MAP assessment.
Notes on the winter and spring results:
It is very encouraging that the percentage of students performing in the 60th percentile or higher in Mathematics and English Reading exceeds 40%. This suggests that Mundo Verde students are outperforming their peers nationally. Students in grades K-2nd experienced a noticeable improvement in their performance in the spring, which is a great sign. Please keep in mind that in order for the percentage of students in the 60th or higher percentile to increase, students must outperform the projected growth from the norm.
Perhaps even more positively, the percentage of students in the 60th percentile or higher has increased in both English Reading (by 1.7%) and Mathematics (by 4.8%) when comparing the winter of this year to the winter of SY22-23. The same can be said for the spring of this school year compared to the spring of last year: +12.2% in Math and +4.9% in English Reading.
Based on the most recent spring tests, which only included students in grades K-2nd, all K-2 decreased in the number of students Performing at the first (lowest) quartile of achievement.
Math Network - Spring
Math Network - Winter
English Reading Network - Winter
English Reading Network - Spring
What we do with these results:
One of the most common questions from parents/caregivers about the MAP results is: What does Mundo Verde do with MAP results?
As the testing windows wind down, I begin gathering and summarizing the results using tools provided by NWEA as well as those developed by Mundo Verde, in collaboration with other partners. These are mostly visualization and slicing tools that allow us to see the results in different ways. With these tools, I review the results with the Network Academic Leadership Team (NALT) in order to identify what academic priorities should be for the remainder of the school year from an academic standpoint and determine immediate next steps. This team includes principals and deans from each campus.
In the winter, I met with each grade level team, with the support of the coach (Principal or Dean) to go over the MAP results. Those meetings were aimed to answer the following questions:
How do the winter results compare to past years? How do the winter results compare to the fall?
Are all students who have not performed well in MAP on the radar of the teachers so they can receive the appropriate differentiated instruction? This is how the school ensures that no students fall through the cracks.
What differentiation method is most likely to be effective in each class? The answer to this question depends on the academic profile of the class. For example, if the class has all students but two or three performing in the 50+ range in math, then an individualized approach is likely the most effective one for those two-three students. However, if the results show a fairly even distribution of student performance amongst all quintiles, then a small group approach is probably most likely to succeed. There are other possibilities of student distributions here as well, and each one is discussed with the grade level coach, teacher and director of data to inform decision-making.
How have results moved historically?
To understand how the outcomes have changed over time, we can look at three measures. 1) The percentage of students performing in the 60th percentile or higher, 2) the median percentile, and 3) the average RIT score. The latter must be considered based on grade level, as the norm does get more demanding as students grow. The tables below show how results have varied since we began tracking student achievement with MAP in SY19-20 (before the pandemic).
A few things to keep in mind while reading the tables:
It is essential that we compare historical results from a year to year in the “same-season” prospective:
For example 2022 fall to 2023 fall, 2022 winter to 2023 winter, and 2023 spring to 2024 spring.
Mundo Verde did not implement MAP for literacy in the winter of SY21-22 due to the increase in COVID cases connected with the appearance of the Omicron variant. We did implement a MAP for math, but it took place in March rather than January/February. We should exercise caution when comparing SY21-22 results with other seasons.
Highlights and comments:
The vast majority of student groups and grade levels have improved their RIT score (MAP’s raw score) between the fall and winter of this year. This is a positive indicator.
Using SY19-20 as a reference point for recovery, there are some grades and populations that have already returned to the performance levels of that year, and some have even surpassed it. While the comparison point is only Kinder (KG), Calle Ocho campus appears to have accomplished this. J.F. Cook campus may have achieved this already as well based on spring MAP results, but it is difficult to definitively conclude because we do not have spring testing from SY19-20 to compare the results.
What about comparisons with other schools?
Unfortunately, the district does not have publicly available data for MAP or iReady (another assessment commonly used in the DC area) that would allow us to compare student performance with other schools in the DC Area. There are some efforts to gather these data by third party organizations, but participation in those studies are subject to non-disclosure agreements that prevent any school from sharing the comparisons externally. Even without the limitations of the non-disclosure agreements, the identity or correspondence of the data to schools is protected.
