Reply to Remind me how long until we get MAP results

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Remind me how long until we get MAP results"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some years it is in early Nov.  [/quote]

Why on earth does it take so long?  The score literally pops up on the kids' screens instantly...
[/quote]

Umm...you are on this forum. Have you not picked up on the trend? It's mcps. folks are here because something is wrong, information is not clear, no one knows the actual answer. So, to answer your question: it would be too easy for mcps to do what you think (scores appearing right away). If your precious Larlo didn't jot down his score (and didnt make a mistake writing it down), or memorize it, you gotta wait until report comes. Or bug the teacher.[/quote]

The score reports are delivered 2 weeks after testing ends. The report includes county averages, so they need everyone's scores before they publish any reports. Then some admin has to go push some buttons. Do you want to pay for GAFA engineers to make a super sophisticated instant system?

Chilll out, folks. [/quote]

Well noted, but riddle me this, Batman:

If middle school criteria-based magnet lotteries utilize these Fall MAP scores from 5th graders as entry gates (albeit locally normed), and

If score reports are delivered 2 weeks after testing ends, and

If that means mid-/late October for the Fall MAPs, and

If some schools scheduled MAP in the first week+ of September, and

If MAP scores largely correlate with exposure to content, and

If a considerable amount of content is taught between early September and early October (e.g., Math 5/6 covering operations with fractions), then

What does that say about the expected relative MAP scores for students fortunate enough to be taking MAP at the end of the testing window, and the resulting likelihood of placement in a magnet lottery pool?

Perhaps those who know the import of the test from schools having administered it early in the window have a more difficult time keeping it cool over the extra month.

(Notes: The MCPS Fall MAP testing window was 9/3-10/4.  The Winter window, where 3rd-grade MAP-R scores are similarly used for placement in the CES lottery pool, is 12/16-1/28.  MCPS has not employed the weeks-of-instruction adjustment available from NWEA to normalize MAP scores when determining lottery candidacy, and NWEA recommends a maximum 3-week testing window to reduce improper comparison among students.)[/quote]

Kids who test high enough to qualify for these pools do so because of the exposure to content they receive outside of school, not because they happened to learn how to do long division late in the first quarter of the school year[/quote]

This is not true.  There are those who do not engage in outside tutoring/enrichment, and there are concepts to which students are newly exposed during the first quarter, which notably includes operations with fractions in Math 5/6.  From these, there are some who test high enough.  There are some who test just at the border of high enough, as well, and that extra content exposure can make the difference as to the side of the border on which they end up.[/quote]

The only cohort for whom this is true is kids at high FARMS schools who can qualify for the pool with scores in the 70th percentile due to locally normed scores. [b]There’s no way a kid at a low FARMS school where the cutoff can be as high as the low 90s percentile can pass that hurdle just by being very good at the content they’ve been exposed to at school.[/b] [/quote]

You'd be wrong, there.  There are kids with mathematically inclined minds who absorb concepts from daily life or are able to deduce concepts, to a degree, when presented with a question, though mathematical vocabulary can be an impediment when comparing to those receiving more formal exposure (e.g., tutoring).  They demonstrate that across multiple tests (i.e., not in a one-off manner that would suggest lucky guessing).

And the low FARMS MAP-M cutoff has been higher than national percentiles in the low 90s.  The low 90s made public by MCPS was in response to an MPIA request from a couple of years back and they haven't publicized the actual numbers since (those change each year with the actual set of scores achieved among MCPS students).  They [i]have[/i] acknowledged that the scores in MCPS, particularly in the low-FARMS and moderate-low-FARMS groupings, (and, then, locally normed percentiles) had gone up in following years.  Parent comparisons of scores for those making/not making the lottery have suggested mid- to high-90s national percentiles for MAP-M.[/quote]

I’m not buying it. A first grader who has never seen a division symbol isn’t going to know how to solve the problem regardless of how “mathematically inclined” their mind is. Same for a second grader who is asked to multiply fractions or find the area of a triangle. To score in the 95th, 96th percentile, a kid needs to have exposure to concepts grade levels beyond what they currently get. There’s no amount of “deducing concepts, to a degree” that will get there. I’m sure it helps in making educated guesses, but MAP-M is almost entirely a test of one’s mastery of content, not one’s math aptitude. [/quote]

From what my kids told me, the questions require a fair amount of thinking. Some examples they gave me were pretty complex. These are not khan-academy questions - at least those the algorithm offers at later stages/harder. "Exposure" might be necessary, not sure about that, but it's for sure not sufficient to score well.[/quote]

Yes it is the same content and question types as Khan, with minor differences. 
[/quote]

Have you seen the questions? I don't think that it is. My kid scored 300+ in 8th and told me it's different.[/quote]

DP. But as someone who had kids at home taking the test during Covid I saw most of the test. And yes, it’s Khan academy drill and kill type questions that  test basic mastery of concepts. [/quote]

The questions are not the same for everyone. DD got questions about trigonometry functions which she didn't know anything about but was able to solve using very rudimentary knowledge. "Mere exposure" is not doing it.[/quote]

You just proved my point. Being able to answer questions with just rudimentary knowledge of the subject shows how superficial the questions generally are. Both of my kids scored in the 99th percentile, so presumably I would have seen the more difficult questions as they topped out, and they were very basic questions about material they hadn't covered yet. Sure, they were able to reason their way few a couple but it's far from a math aptitude test.[/quote]

I don't think you understood what I told you - the kid was given a fairly complex question that involved trigonometic functions, but all my kid actually knows is what sin and cos are. Yet, by using this very rudimentary knowledge she was able to solve this much more advanced question. The difference between kids who can and can't do that is not one of "mere exposure" - only very few kids exposed to basic definitions can take them as far.

Furthermore, MAP-M is not supposed to be "a math aptitude test" - whatever that is and whatever strange reason there is for that thing to exist. The MAP-M tests math knowledge/skills. It is not my favorite test of those skills, but it is a decent test and not actually all that "prep able" unless knowing and understanding math is some kind of diabolical prep for you.

Finally, kids scoring at 99th percentile of MAP-M can have more than 50 point difference in actual scores. So, no, all 99th percentile kids don't get the same questions. Again, my kid told me some of the questions, and as a person who is very good at math, I concluded that these were not easy questions of the kahn academy sort.[/quote]

It's completely "prep able". You have no idea what you're talking about. [/quote]

If it's so prepable, why isn't every one scoring in the 300s. It's not for the lack of trying.[/quote]

Umm. Because not everyone preps? I’d assume only a very small percentage do so. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics