Benefits of Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)

PennSchool uses the Northwest Education Association’s (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Growth assessment to track individual student growth during their time at the school.

To have the best support for students preparing for the MAP test, teachers at PennSchool are also trained to understand the importance and benefits of the test to their students.

“MAP aims to assess what students are ready to learn, and this is its most important benefit. The test is a computer-based assessment that will adapt to the pace and level each individual student shows, which means, that every student will have a different set of questions that will increase (or decrease) in difficulty based on the skills the student demonstrates. Every test taker has its own journey.” – Mr. Nick Winfrey

Students have to cope with many challenges to take the test online. “Upon beginning the test, each and every student will receive a distinct set of test questions based on their responses to the previous questions. For example, if a student answers a question wrong, then the next question will be slightly easier. On the other hand, a correct answer will lead to more challenging follow-up questions, in an attempt to accurately measure and determine the students’ current level and progress.” – Mr. David Sadler

The MAP test is to measure their progress in learning in the areas of Mathematics, Reading and language usage according to AERO (USA) standards. This comprehensive assessment provides useful information for both students and PennSchool in the process of supporting and tailoring the student’s curriculum.

“Firstly, With the MAP test the school will be able to evaluate a student’s strengths and weaknesses to a greater degree than with conventional testing. This is due to the MAP Test being a computer adaptive test, meaning that each time a student takes the exam the test will algorithmically adapt based on previous answers… The end result of this costume test allows exceptional students to show their skills and for those that need improvement to show their full spectrum of aptitude.

Moreover, when our students take the MAP Test, they will be given an RIT score, which is a score used to estimate student achievement. Over time, as the student takes more follow-up MAP tests this score will allow us to gauge the amount of improvement the student has made in a given time frame and unjust our desired learning outcomes accordingly.

Lastly, with the proliferation of the MAP Test to so many locations across the world, our school’s usage of it will allow us great opportunities in terms of comparing ourselves with peer schools, that were not before possible. The MAP Test will enable us to find what subjects our school is performing well at and what select areas may need to be targeted for improvement when contrasted with other schools across the globe.” – Mr. Julian Villaquiran

As a competency test used by more than 11 million students in the United States and 140 countries around the world, the scores from the MAP-NWEA will help us to place each student in classes that solidifies his or her strengths and addresses weaknesses.