Reply to RMIB and Blair criteria for HS program acceptance

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Blair median MAP score has been around 280 for the past few years so kids below that certainly get in. All As in STEM subjects are necessary too. A good rule of thumb is above 99th percentile. I wouldn’t bother below that.

I’m shocked that middle schools are helping with applications. Or at least at one middle school. That doesn’t happen elsewhere.[/quote]
How can you be above 99 pct in MAP? That’s literally impossible. [/quote]

Easily. You look at the cutoff for 99th percentile and you see if you are at that or above. Either is fine. Below is more of a long shot. If I’m remembering correctly it’s about 272 in 8th grade.[/quote]

DP.  Trying to thread the needle on this.  Anything above the 99th percentile score is still in the 99th percentile.  Stochastically, that can be the 99.99th percentile, but we never would call it the 100th percentile.  Though one might utilize a known mean, standard deviation and assumed distribution independently to determine a percentile to tenths, hundredths, thousandths, etc., NWEA's MAP results only report whole-number percentiles vs. achieved RIT scores (the 272 suggested above, though that is off by a bit).  Both PPs are correct, each in their own way.

Our understanding is that the program teams evaluating applications are given only candidates' MAP percentiles, and not their raw scores.  This would mean that there is no bump to admission chances based on being "above" the 99th percentile (achieving an RIT score above that at which the 99th percentile begins).

NWEA has just published the 2025 norms, as they do every 5 years.  Unsurprisingly, as these norms are drawn from a sampling of scores across the country achieved during the latter part of pandemic recovery, mean and 99th percentile RITs are down just a bit from the prior norms (2020, based on scores from similarly earlier years).  From the NWEA primer:

"NWEA® continually refines the methodologies used to generate our norms so they remain statistically rigorous as well as accurate and relevant. This 2025 update is essential to account for changes in US student demographics, postpandemic shifts in student performance, and the item-selection algorithm in the newly enhanced version of MAP® Growth™. Educators can utilize the MAP Growth norms in various ways, including:

- Evaluating student and school achievement and growth

- Individualizing instruction and setting goals with students

- Supporting conversations about achievement and growth patterns

The data used to produce the MAP Growth norms were sampled from 116 million scores of 13.8 million students across 30,000 schools spanning six testing terms from fall 2022 to spring 2024."

(There is additional info about weeks of instruction prior to testing, but MCPS has not, to date, made associated adjustment; though the effect is small, a shift of, say, 1-2 RIT points based on having taken MAP early or late in the testing window can make a difference for some...)

The new 8th grade fall means are 216 for MAP-R and 222 for MAP-M, with standard deviations of 17 & 18, respectively.  These yield normal-distributuon (Bell curve) 99th percentile RIT scores beginning at 256 for MAP-R and 264 for MAP-M.  (2020 norms had these at 258 | 269, with means of 218 | 225 and standard deviations of 17 | 19.)  Detailed tables may show variation from these numbers if a higher-precision standard deviation (or alternate percentile methodology) is used than that available in/presumed from the published primer.

As MCPS has seen RIT scores rise in excess of the national normative data, especially at low-FARMS schools, with now-greater time for pandemic recovery than the 2022-24 period from which the 2025 norms were drawn, DCCAPS and the evaluation teams for criteria-based programs may have a more difficult time due to an increased proportion of those MCPS program applicants hitting the national 99th percentile.  Even the MCPS algorithm for local norming preserves any score at/above the 99th national as locally normed 99th.

Perhaps the planned expansion of programs may help, but admission decisions for these will come a year further on, and they may not want to make any criteria change in the interim -- similar reasoning has been provided in the past for delaying possible adjustments.  I could see their maintaining use of the 2020 norms, as inappropriate as that may be to proper reflection of the newer test, as a stop gap; attempting, for instance, to impute/utilize unpublished tenths of percentiles would create less manageable perception/communications/other problems that I think they would try to avoid.[/quote]

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