St. Margaret of Scotland Families:
On Monday we will be sending home our scores from the NWEA testing period in September. As you know, our second through eighth-grade students participated in our first round of NWEA testing in September. The NWEA MAP Growth Assessment is a computer-adaptive test that adjusts the difficulty of questions based on a student’s responses. The questions begin at grade level, and as a student gets questions correct or incorrect, the test adapts above or below grade level to find the student’s ability level. This allows for multiple data points which help us to focus more on promoting individual student and class growth, supporting student needs, and getting more frequent feedback on the impact of our instructional practices.
Recently, Mrs. Villmer and I participated in professional development where we learned how to interpret scores for the school, grade levels, classes, and individual students. In all honesty, I was fully expecting an implementation dip in our scores as we unveiled a completely new way of testing. I am very happy to report that our students did an excellent job.
St. Margaret of Scotland students 2-8 are in the 78% in math, 80% in reading, and 76% in Language Usage. These scores are truly exceptional in regular circumstances without factoring in it was our student’s first time taking the test.
I am also happy to report solid growth in most areas for our 7th & 8th grade students who additionally took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. We saw growth in almost every domain including Math and Computation.
As with all standardized testing grades, these scores are just a snapshot of our student’s understanding of concepts and skills during September. As a school, we use these results to better understand areas of strength and growth in our curriculum. Both tests give a wealth of data that we can use for curriculum planning and differentiation. I am very excited to see our growth over the next two testing periods for NWEA. Our next testing period is January 6 through January 31st.
Also quickly – on a separate but equally important note – please remember our sixth-grade students in a special way next week as they will be heading out for sixth-grade camp. We pray they have an awesome time and grow together as a class.
Have a great weekend! See you at Walk-A-Thon!
God Bless,
Patrick Holley