NWEA Introduces New Assessments Built on the Common Core State Standards
Portland, OR (PRWEB) July 16, 2013 -- Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a national leader in computer adaptive assessment, announced today that it will release a new version of its Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) assessment built on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The new test will be available for use by school districts throughout the country starting July 20. The assessment, called Common Core MAP, will allow educators to accurately assess their students’ learning levels on the new standards and monitor student growth term-to-term and year-to-year.
MAP is an interim assessment administered by nearly 6,500 school districts in all fifty U.S. states and 129 foreign countries, and widely used to measure student growth and project student proficiency on end- of-year state tests. It is expected that 45 U.S. states will be teaching to the CCSS in the 2013-2014 school year, and student data from Common Core MAP will serve as an accurate predictor of performance on state-administered end-of-year Common Core tests. In the coming school year, over 20 million Common Core MAP tests will be administered.
MAP is also used to assess student academic growth throughout the school year and across grades. This growth measurement is particularly important to U.S. educators now, as they transition from state standards to the CCSS. With the change in standards, educators may see dramatic changes in student test scores, but growth measurement with MAP will remain constant. Common Core MAP test items are new, but the stable scale behind every MAP test remains unchanged.
NWEA introduced its first CCSS-aligned test in 2010. As the CCSS have been defined, MAP has evolved to reflect those emerging standards. The new Common Core MAP allows students to demonstrate deeper understanding about core subjects, use technology-enhanced items to construct responses, and provide evidence of their learning—all key requirements of the CCSS. For states that are adopting the CCSS and opting to add up to 15% of their own standards content, NWEA has created hand-aligned CCSS + 15% MAP tests.
“What Common Core MAP gave us is a new set of results tied to the Common Core that we hadn’t had in the past,” says Greg Schultz, an educator in Kentucky whose public school district piloted a version of the assessment in the 2012-2013 school year. He adds, “It allowed us to see where our instructional holes were... a very reliable way to be able to pinpoint exactly where standards were falling with our kids in their instructional level and then make the plans necessary to make those gaps go away.”
About NWEA
NWEA is a global not-for-profit educational services organization headquartered in Portland, Oregon. NWEA partners with educational organizations worldwide to provide computer-based assessment suites, professional development and research services.
Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) adaptive assessments leverage more than 30 years of research into student growth that informs decision making at every level, from classrooms to boardrooms.
Learn more at NWEA.org.
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Jean Fleming, Northwest Evaluation Association, http://www.nwea.org, 971-271-6978, [email protected]
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