Blog:
Data Question of the Month! Using NWEA Norms to Establish Goals on State Tests
Question: How do we use NWEA norms to identify student performance and growth goals around meeting state proficiency standards?
Answer: Simply put, we can’t.
NWEA performance and growth norms are nationally representative, and the students who comprised those norming samples came from all 50 states. Consequently, NWEA norms inform us of how a student’s observed MAP performance or growth compares to other similar kids across the nation.
401 Pre-K? Investing in early-childhood education
Last week, nearly 15,000 education scholars and leaders gathered for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. This year, the conference focused on the relationship of education and poverty.
Aligning the MAP Assessment to Content Standards
As assessment data is increasingly used in high stakes evaluations, a major area of discussion is the alignment between the assessment and the responsibility to teach content in accordance with the applicable content standards. While this is a very broad topic, answering the more specific question about how we align our MAP assessment to content standards is a good first step towards the overall answer. To do that I invited our English and Language Arts (ELA) content manager, Sarah Aaserude, and one of our ELA content specialists, Elizabeth Laskey, to be guest bloggers on the topic. Here’s the first of several posts on this topic. Enjoy.
Inviting a Lawsuit? – Evaluating art teachers on the school reading results
The National Education Association announced yesterday that they are filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of their Florida affiliate against the state department of education, challenging the way student test scores are used for teacher evaluation. The lawsuit alleges that the seven teachers named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit were evaluated on students and subjects they don’t teach.
The Differences Between the Student and School Norms
As we approach the end of the school year, I’ve started to receive an increasing number of questions from partner schools and districts about how to interpret the growth of students. More specifically, these questions often center on how best to apply the 2011 student norms and/or the 2012 school norms to the achievement and growth information of their students, and when it is appropriate to use the student norms instead of the school norms, and vice versa.
Grouping Students by Academic Ability on the Rise
Once considered a discriminatory practice, grouping students by academic ability appears to be trending upward, according to a recent study by the Brooking Institute’s Brown Center on Education Policy. Ability grouping involves segmenting classrooms according to student academic ability. Historically, ability grouping has come under fire, in part due to the high correlation between academic ability and factors such as social class and race.
Measurement and Standard Error
This morning when I stepped on my bathroom scale and felt that familiar twinge of guilt and disappointment, I quickly reminded myself that bathroom scales are imperfect measuring devices. In all probability, my true weight falls within some range of possible values, centered roughly on the indicated weight. Quickly, I calculated how much less I wanted it to be. That value, I decided, must surely be the margin of error for my bathroom scale.
Data Question of the Month: Testing Calendars
We often get questions from our partners about how to establish their testing calendar. Here are a few of those questions and our responses:
Partner Question about Data! Student Effort and Test Score Accuracy
The one question I get asked most frequently from partners has to do with the accuracy of test scores, specifically in the context of whether a student has given appropriate effort on the test. This has always been of interest to users of our data, as they want to know if the RIT score a student receives accurately captures the student’s actual test performance. However, as an increasing number of schools are now using NWEA assessments for accountability purposes, the focus on the accuracy of test scores—and whether or not students are giving appropriate effort to ensure accurate test scores—is at the forefront of the minds of a lot of educators.
A Matter of Degree
Even as costs continue to rise, the college degree is more important than ever. According to a recent New York Times article, even people holding entry-level positions (some paying as little as $10 per hour) hold four-year degrees. These positions include secretaries, file clerks and office runners.
The article goes on to state this phenomena, known as “degree inflation”, may be one reason the unemployment rate for high school graduates is nearly double that of college graduates. Seems like a good incentive to stay the course and finish college.