The school is looking at changing from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) for norm-referenced achievement testing and going with the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP). The MAP is a computer adaptive test, so the questions vary for each student based on how well they did on the previous questions. If they are answering correctly, the questions get progressively more difficult.
The MAP test can be given up to four times each year so teachers will be able to monitor student achivement more closely. Since they are on the computer, students will be able to take the tests during their study hall which will reduce the amount of time students miss class for taking the ITBS. Score reports are available to teachers within 24 hours after completion of the test.
The reading test yields a "lexile" score for each student, which identifies the grade level a student is reading at. This data will help the school determine if we are reaching our goal of 100% of high school graduates will read at the eighth grade reading level or above. This is not available from the ITBS.
Drawbacks to using MAP is that we will not be able to compare student test scores from ITBS with MAP scores. That means we may have to give both one or two years so we can compare scores from this year to next year and in subsequent years. We do this to see how student learning has changed from one year to the next.
