To ensure that student academic growth in a subject area is accurately captured, it is imperative that the underlying scale remains stable over time. As item parameter stability constitutes one of the factors that affects scale stability, NWEA® periodically conducts studies to check for the stability of the item parameter estimates for MAP®…

This review examines research on math achievement in students who are blind or visually impaired (BVI), and seeks to show the opportunities that BVIs have access to in order to demonstrate their knowledge of mathematics as well as the unique challenges they face and the ways in which these barriers have (or have not) been addressed. Math…

This study, which is part of a larger project that aims to make online math more accessible to students with visual impairments (VI), examines the text quality of math assessment items for students with VI who use screen readers. Using data from about 29.5 million students taking standard versions of the MAP Growth math assessment, and 48,845…

This report documents the norming study procedure used to produce the achievement and growth user norms for English MAP Reading Fluency Foundational Skills. It also provides snapshots of the achievement and growth norms for each grade and domain.

This technical report documents the processes and procedures employed by NWEA® to build and support the English MAP® Reading Fluency™ assessments administered during the 2020-2021 school year. It is written for measurement professionals and administrators to help evaluate the quality of MAP Reading Fluency. The seven sections of this report: (1)…

The MAP® Growth™ theory of action describes key features of MAP Growth and its position in a comprehensive assessment system. The basic premise of the theory of action is that all students learn when MAP Growth is situated in a comprehensive assessment system and used for its intended purposes to yield information about student learning and enable…

School systems started the 2021-22 school year with extra resources and plans for recovery, but repeated resurgences of the COVID-19 virus thwarted hopes of a strong comeback. Schools continued to face a myriad of challenges including severe staff shortages, high rates of absenteeism and sickness, and rolling school closures forced by the…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Student achievement in 2021-22: Cause for hope and continued urgency." The authors investigated two main research questions in this brief: (1) How do achievement gains…

About one in five students in the US attends a rural school, and over half of all school districts are in rural areas. And yet very little is known about achievement, achievement gaps, and academic growth in rural schools, including how school-year and summer changes in achievement may differ in these schools. This lack of information is…

In this brief we examine how variability in students' math and reading test scores changed across the pandemic, including whether increased dispersion was concentrated at one part of the test score distribution. Using reading and math assessment data from a sample of 8 million students in grades 3-8 in 24,000 public schools who took MAP Growth…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "The Widening Achievement Divide during COVID-19." The authors investigated two main research questions in this brief: (1) To what degree have students' reading and math…

A series of course-specific MAP Growth Mathematics and Science subject tests were released successively starting in August 2017 to replace the older NWEA End-of-Course (EOC) tests. Different from the prior NWEA EOC tests taken only at the end of a course, these course-specific tests can be administered multiple times throughout the school year,…

While the ongoing academic impacts of the COVID pandemic in grades 3-8 has been well documented, far less is known about its effects on students who were in pre-K or kindergarten when the pandemic started in March 2020. In this brief, we focus on students who were in first and second grade in the 2021-22 school year, and for whom the majority of…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Progress toward Pandemic Recovery: Continued Signs of Rebounding Achievement at the Start of the 2022-23 School Year" (ED627355). The two main research questions…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Learning during COVID-19: An Update on Student Achievement and Growth at the Start of the 2021-22 School Year." The goal of this brief is to summarize student achievement…