TCSD to use new testing method starting in '07-'08

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

By Sam Petri

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-This fall, the Teton County School District will replace its current student-teacher assessment system with Northwest Evaluation’s computer-based Measure of Academic Progress (MAP).

The MAP test will measure student’s abilities in reading and math, and, in the future, possibly science. Test results will show how students are progressing and allow teachers to track them on an individual level with greater accuracy.

The computer-based MAP test responds to each test-taker’s last answer. If the student gets a question right, she will be asked a slightly more difficult question. If the student answers a question incorrectly, she will be asked a slightly easier question.

Because the test is taken on a computer, preliminary results are available immediately, and final results are presented within 72 hours to the school district.

“We feel strongly that teachers need the type of feedback where they can work with kids immediately,” Patty Coursey, the district’s secondary curriculum coordinator and part of the team that researched and trained for the MAP test, said at the June 27 school board meeting. “You truly get where the kids are at. PAWS (Proficiency Test of Wyoming Students) was never designed to do that. MAP is designed to do that.”
MAP groups students according to ability and skills.

Teachers will be able to see that a group of students needs help in, say, division, that another group of students needs help with multiplication, and that a third group is excelling off the charts in geometry. Teachers then can adjust their instruction accordingly.

PAWS was a product of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation testing requirements. TCSD has chosen to use the MAP test to get a more accurate look at the abilities of each of their students and teachers. Although MAP can test on a level K-10, Superintendent Pam Shea said she would leave it up to the individual schools within the district to decide whether they wanted to test grades K-2. Right now TCSD uses student teacher evaluations in grades 3-8 and 11.

Training for test administrators will take place on July 23. During the school year, when teachers get their data back for the first time, a consultant will be on hand to work with them and help them interpret what the data mean and how they can use them in the classroom.

TCSD has the ability to test students twice a year, and has licensed the MAP test for a three-year period.

“It’s data-rich,” Shea said. “That’s the power of it.”
PERMALINK:
TCSD to use new testing method starting in '07-'08 | Planet JH News Article: Jackson Hole High School

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