Reply to Did MCPS do a sneaky thing for the magnet lotteries?

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Reply to "Did MCPS do a sneaky thing for the magnet lotteries?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The "sneaky" is probably lurking in the words "locally normed" below.  Likely they divided the schools into three groups based on FARMS percentiles.  Now they are looking at the top 15% from each of those three groupings.  The top 15% scores at a 80-90% FARMS school are likely different from those at a 10% FARMS school. This approach would pretty much explain the changes year over year.  I support it, btw.  No desire to return to parent initiated process.

"Multiple academic measures were used to identify students. Given the impact of COVID-19 school-building closures, both measures from the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years were included. To be placed in the humanities and communication lottery pool, an A in both reading and writing and an indication of above reading grade level on the report card from Grade 4, [b]and a locally normed minimum of 85th percentile on either last year (winter) or this year’s (fall) MAP-R.[/b] For math, science or computer science, an A in both math and science and an indication of on level or higher for reading on the report card from Grade 4 and a locally normed minimum of 85th percentile on either last year (winter) or this year’s (fall) MAP-M."
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I think it is worth talking about what this means, because the difference is not as large as one would imagine. It's not like they line the kids up by test score and take the top 15% at each school.

Rather, they use local norming against the huge pool of kids who have taken the MAP. On this board, people have shared MAP scores from various "bands" of schools and the same grade/quarter/raw scores did not move that much based on whether a child was at a wealthy school or a FARMS school.

That makes sense, because any large sample size is going to represent a bell curve and most kids will fall toward the middle, by definition. Not every wealthy school has sky-high schools, and not every high-needs school has rock bottom scores. Across the entire county, tens of thousands of kids, there are plenty of "average" kids.

So, let's talk about Fall MAP-M for 5th grade. Nationally, the 85th percentile is 225.  With a big enough sample size, you are not going to see huge swings between the local norms. Maybe it is 227 in high wealth schools and 223 in Title I schools, but it's not a big difference. 
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