What Van Alstyne's New MAP Tests Are, and What They Are Not

Van Alstyne ISD students will take a new assessment this year called MAP Growth, and the district's explanation to families leads with what the test is not.

It is not a pass-fail test, the district says, and it is not tied to student promotion. It is an instructional tool, meant to show teachers each student's current level of understanding, guide lesson planning and measure growth over time.

Three checkpoints

Students will take MAP Growth three times a year:

• September establishes a beginning-of-year baseline and helps guide instructional planning
• January measures progress at midyear
• May measures growth across the full school year

A test that adapts

Unlike a traditional standardized test, MAP Growth is adaptive: as a student answers, the assessment adjusts the difficulty of the next questions based on the responses. The result maps where a student actually is, rather than scoring everyone against a single fixed form.

The assessments are developed by NWEA and used by districts nationwide.

Sources

vanalstyneisd.org