By Jon Mettus
Editor-In-Chief

This past week senior Academic Enrichment (AE) students took the reading and math sections of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test in their classes. The MAP test is a product offered by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).

According to senior AE teacher Stacey Marozsan, the reading scores of all the classes have thrown off MAP’s national statistics.

Unlike most assessments the MAP test isn’t taken using a test booklet and Scantron, not everyone gets the same questions and the grades aren’t calculated purely on a percentage based scale.

The MAP test is a new kind of assessment. It’s taken online and as students start to answer questions – wrong or right – the test adapts to them. The more they get right the harder the test gets, but if they get a couple in a row wrong the questions get easier. Theoretically the test has no ceiling.

As for the scoring of the test there are no passing or failing grades; the MAP test reports scores on the RIT Scale (for Rasch Unit). As opposed to a regular grading scale, the RIT Scale is an achievement scale that helps measure growth over time.

According to the NWEA website, the test will help educators “gain a deep understanding of what a student knows. RIT assigns a value of difficulty to each item, and with an equal interval measurement, so the difference between scores is the same regardless of whether a student is at the top, bottom, or middle of the scale. RIT measures understanding regardless of grade level, so the information helps to track a student’s progress from year to year.”

The AE students will be taking the math and reading tests again in the spring to see how they have improved from the fall.

“My hope is that [the test] provides specific data to help students meet their own educational goals,” Marozsan said.

Learn more at www.nwea.org