MAP Growth testing update

 

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The testing so far

We have just come to end of a week in which students in Grades 3 to 10 have been doing MAP Growth testing. It has gone pretty smoothly so far this year.  Of course - as it is an online test - we have had some predictable technical issues! But, in general, the devices have all worked well, the backup devices have helped some of the students out, the Internet has been pretty stable and we have been able to do them all on campus. Hopefully all of these things will remain true next week, and for the week or two after the October break as we complete all of the tests.

One thing that is very noticeable is that the students who have been at AISM since last year (or longer) are becoming very accustomed to the format of the tests and therefore starting to feel more comfortable with how the tests work, the various tools that are available in the tests, how the questions are asked, and how they are expected to respond to them. Of course, this isn't true for Grade 3 students because this is the first time they have experienced the tests!

Testing two times this year

This will be the first academic year since the introduction of MAP Growth testing at AISM in which we will be able to administer the tests twice - once at the start of the year and then again towards the end of the year. This means that we will be able to start gathering the data about learning growth within an academic year that makes these tests powerful.

A change

One change that was made this year - and that you may have heard your child talking about - is that students no longer see their "score" at the end of each test. Last year, many students, teachers and parents shared stories of students being overly competitive about the scores, pressuring their peers to share their scores and even mocking students who did not appear to do very well. This led to all sorts of anxiety for many students and is really not the spirit of these tests, for the following reasons: 

• The purpose of MAP Growth testing is to gather valuable data about each individual student that can inform teaching, it is not to compare them with each other or rank them against each other. 
• The tests adapt in order to pose questions that are just on the edge of each students' comfort zone - the area in which the questions are just easy for them to be successful and just hard enough to be a challenge. So, each student's score, known as the RIT Score, is unique to them. 
• Finally, students must not be defined by their MAP scores - not by teachers, parents or their peers. This is just one test, on one day... a day that could be a great day for them, or it could be a terrible day. All sorts of factors can and do influence each student's frame of mind and emotional state on the day of a test, and these inevitably affect how they do in the test. The data that comes from MAP growth tests is just part of the bigger picture of all the assessment data that is gathered throughout the course of the year in each subject area.

Getting the results

Families can expect to receive these in early November. This allows time for all of the testing to be completed and for teachers to have a chance to study the patterns and trends in the data beforehand so they can effectively respond to any questions that may arise. 

Please feel free to get in touch with Sam Sherratt, our Director of Learning, with any questions that you might have about the MAP Growth tests in general - sam.sherratt@aism-moz.com.