Anonymous wrote:If M class only goes to level P then how did my second grader get a higher letter? When does MAP-R testing start? Is there a third way they assess?

A child can have a higher level on the report card because that is the level the teacher entered...which is an estimate unless you have some sort of assessment that lists that level as the results. Last year, my second grader had level Q on the final report card. Nonetheless, the teacher said that that was her best guess and that she couldn't test beyond level P.

If M class only goes to level P then how did my second grader get a higher letter? When does MAP-R testing start? Is there a third way they assess?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS does not test in early ES past 1 year above grade level. So if in second grade your child gets to a P and that's the benchmark for end of 3rd then your child's report card will show a P for the rest of second grade. It doesn't matter what your child's reading level really is, MCPS teachers can't test them past 1 year above grade level.

This is a policy at many MCPS schools, including ours, but not all.

At ours, my first grader has been a P on the report card since the end of K. But, the teacher told me in October that he was testing at an S. So, officially he's stuck at P, but, his individual teacher is still testing above that.

Likewise, my third grader's report card said P all last year--when I asked at the end of the year, I was told he was really a U.

Anonymous wrote:There's some cognitive dissonance in the higher grades of late elementary. The kids MAP-R scores are not substituted for the reading levels. So, for kids who score very high on the MAP-R the suggested Lexile is late high school, beginning college text, but the reading level is still X, Y, Z ...

Yes, though there has been for us some truth to there being real value in looking more deeply into story structure, character development, etc. even though the books are well under the reading level of dc. Maybe we'll regret this in a couple of years but ok in late elementary so far. 1100 lexile.

Anonymous wrote:MCPS does not test in early ES past 1 year above grade level. So if in second grade your child gets to a P and that's the benchmark for end of 3rd then your child's report card will show a P for the rest of second grade. It doesn't matter what your child's reading level really is, MCPS teachers can't test them past 1 year above grade level.

This is a policy at many MCPS schools, including ours, but not all.

There's some cognitive dissonance in the higher grades of late elementary. The kids MAP-R scores are not substituted for the reading levels. So, for kids who score very high on the MAP-R the suggested Lexile is late high school, beginning college text, but the reading level is still X, Y, Z ...

Anonymous wrote:My kid spent all of 2nd Grade at the same reading level because the 2nd Grade teacher thought the 1st Grade teacher had assessed too high but 2nd Grade teacher did not want to move the level down. It made the report cards in 2nd Grade even more useless than normal. But things got back on track in 3rd and are on track now in 4th.

+1 Same exact thing.

Just because a kid can read at a high level doesn't mean they can comprehend at the same level (or write/respond to questions at that level).

I'm sure your kid is fine.

The M-Class testing administered in K-2nd only goes up to level P. They can't test beyond level P with M-Class. Often advanced readers are not tested in May, even if they aren't quite at level P yet. When this happens (or your reader tops out at level P), MCPS will send you a letter in June stating that your child's reading was recently assessed, but it's a reprint of previous results.

In 3rd grade they start using the Map-R to assess reading. There is no grade level limit on Map-R. Unfortunately, no matter how strong a reader is, the school doesn't have to allow the child take reading with a higher grade. It's not done at our elementary. At our home school, in 3rd grade, every advanced reader in a class is grouped together, whether they are one quarter or five years advanced. Gifted students who don't make it into the HGC will not be challenged in reading.