Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's why they look at percentile and not the raw score. It's not statistically significant given the margin of error at the tail.

But 99-99-99 is different from 98-99-99.

But the 99-99-99 or 98-99-99 are percentiles and NOT raw scores or scale scores.

The MAP scores are something different altogether, they are RIT scores, a score calculated by NWEA based on several factors.

Standardized testing scores rely on a LOT of psychometrics, they are not strictly # correct or # incorrect.

This is a shortcoming of MAP, although NWEA doesn’t look at it that way. You should remember MAP was designed to measure progress and identify students who aren’t meeting benchmarks.

It was never intended for finding students eligible for access to higher level math or gifted programs. And if it’s used for such the data only works when a lower cut off score is applied around 90%.

As far moving from 2-5 to 6+. It is not so much the increased difficulty of questions in 6+ that causes a dip, but the *lack* difficult questions in 2-5. High achieving kids with focus can score high on 2-5 just by answering arithmetic problems with high accuracy. There are questions drawn from 6th and 7th grade, but a student does not necessarily need to answer these to get a score in the 99%. If they do they score jumps up, perhaps artificially so. The closer a student is to the ceiling of a test the less accurate the score.

The 6+ includes content from 3rd grade through high school algebra and geometry. Disclaimer: MAP is a norm-referenced assessment. It’s not a criterion-referenced assessment. That means you cannot use it to assess a child’s grade level. You cannot determine your 6th grader is *at* a ninth grade level from this test.

Bottom line: MAP is almost meaningless for kid in the top percentiles. It’s not designed for them.

Anonymous wrote:NWEA has a publication online that discusses the score dip from the 2-5 MAP to the 6+ MAP. According to the test maker, the score decrease that is routinely experienced at this shift point is worse among high achieving students. They attribute it to the more advanced topics addressed in the test, to which many 6th Graders have never been exposed.

OP here, my DC told me exactly- there were trigonometry questions in the test which DC had no clue.

This is a 5th grader PP was speaking about.

Anonymous wrote:NWEA has a publication online that discusses the score dip from the 2-5 MAP to the 6+ MAP. According to the test maker, the score decrease that is routinely experienced at this shift point is worse among high achieving students. They attribute it to the more advanced topics addressed in the test, to which many 6th Graders have never been exposed.

My high scoring kid dropped 20 pts from Spring 5th to Fall 6th grade test. According to the doc the test starts at the level finished in the previous test. My DC told me there were items on the test DC never saw before, especially in geometry.

NWEA has a publication online that discusses the score dip from the 2-5 MAP to the 6+ MAP. According to the test maker, the score decrease that is routinely experienced at this shift point is worse among high achieving students. They attribute it to the more advanced topics addressed in the test, to which many 6th Graders have never been exposed.

So your child's scores fell from a 99-99-99 number to a 98-99-99 number? That's unfortunate, but that probably means he wasn't at the high end of the 99th percentile kids in the first place. I don't think it will change his chances to get in to a magnet very much.

Our experience is with the CES this year so obviously different from applying to MS magnets but it seemed like all the real outliers with 99th percentile scores for several grades higher got into the CES. No matter what you hear on DCUM there are not a lot of these kids.

For the 99th percentile at grade level kids it seemed like a crap shoot. Some got in and some did not. DD's CES class is filled with these kids and there are at least a dozen more at her home school who are excellent students too.

Anonymous wrote:That's why they look at percentile and not the raw score. It's not statistically significant given the margin of error at the tail.

But 99-99-99 is different from 98-99-99.

That's why they look at percentile and not the raw score. It's not statistically significant given the margin of error at the tail.

What are you talking about? The higher the score in MAP, the greater the margin of error.

Anonymous wrote:Devastated? That's within the margin of error.

Not if the scores are already high.

Devastated? That's within the margin of error.

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Anonymous wrote:People lie and/or exaggerate. The median map r scores for Eastern magnet historically has been 234/235, which is the 94th percentile for Spring 5th grade. My child's compacted math 5/6 teacher left the fall 2017 map scores on her desk while conducting parent teacher meetings. I admit that I looked out of curiosity and noted that only a few kids scored over 260 on MAP M. Most of the kids were in the 230s to 250s. This was at one of the schools mentioned often on this board.

Were these 260+ selected to TP?

2 of them went to TP.

Were they the two who scored the highest on the MAP-M? Were there others below 260 who got in to TPMS? Or do you think MCPS does not really distinguish beyond a certain cutoff?

I don't remember if they were the highest score of the 3 or 4 students who scored the highest in the Fall. However, I do remember that they were the only 2 that were admitted to TPMS and both scored over 260. My child told me that they also scored in the 99% on the CogAt test. I don't think the children lied to my child about their score. My child also scored 99% but had a lower MAP M score in the low 250s, which was also 99% for Fall MAP M 5th grade.

The process last year was not transparent but thought I add my observations about the probable role of MAP scores.

Do you think that they only consider the Fall 5th grade scores? We had a great summer with lots of fun vacations, and always suffer from the summer slide. DC always does worse in the fall, but was phenomenal in the Spring of 4th.

Same here. DS had a 4 point slide in both reading and math on the MAP for the fall over the spring scores. He's devastated.

Anonymous wrote:Too many qualified kids and too little seats available;

can MCPS- if they care- do something to have more kids getting what they need even without spending more money?

Maybe our community doesn't need that many academic advance kids?

No. It will require more money. A whole lot more. Either more money has to come in via taxes. Or funding has to be taken from other places in the budget. And much more than just one place BTW.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People lie and/or exaggerate. The median map r scores for Eastern magnet historically has been 234/235, which is the 94th percentile for Spring 5th grade. My child's compacted math 5/6 teacher left the fall 2017 map scores on her desk while conducting parent teacher meetings. I admit that I looked out of curiosity and noted that only a few kids scored over 260 on MAP M. Most of the kids were in the 230s to 250s. This was at one of the schools mentioned often on this board.

Were these 260+ selected to TP?

2 of them went to TP.

Were they the two who scored the highest on the MAP-M? Were there others below 260 who got in to TPMS? Or do you think MCPS does not really distinguish beyond a certain cutoff?

I don't remember if they were the highest score of the 3 or 4 students who scored the highest in the Fall. However, I do remember that they were the only 2 that were admitted to TPMS and both scored over 260. My child told me that they also scored in the 99% on the CogAt test. I don't think the children lied to my child about their score. My child also scored 99% but had a lower MAP M score in the low 250s, which was also 99% for Fall MAP M 5th grade.

The process last year was not transparent but thought I add my observations about the probable role of MAP scores.

Do you think that they only consider the Fall 5th grade scores? We had a great summer with lots of fun vacations, and always suffer from the summer slide. DC always does worse in the fall, but was phenomenal in the Spring of 4th.

I remember that the Enriched Programs/GT representative said at the info session last year that Fall 5th grade MAP scores would be considered and 4th grade PARCC. I don't remember if previous MAP scores would be considered and I don't remember anyone asking that question. Honestly, I think they are just taking a snapshot of data at the time of application. I don't think they looked that closely and considered growth or historical performance. But who knows, there are not many published details.