GILROY
– Over the next couple of weeks, Gilroy public school students
will spend hours outside their classrooms, taking a standardized
test that won’t count on their report cards and won’t directly
change how schools rank statewide.
GILROY – Over the next couple of weeks, Gilroy public school students will spend hours outside their classrooms, taking a standardized test that won’t count on their report cards and won’t directly change how schools rank statewide.
Yet the exam, known as the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP), may be the most important test kids in Gilroy Unified School District take all year.
The MAP test, a roughly three-hour standardized exam administered via computer, is quickly becoming one of the most useful and cutting-edge tools in GUSD’s student improvement arsenal, district officials say. Given the state’s emphasis on school accountability, as well as the district’s goal to get 90 percent of its students reading and doing math at grade level by June 2004, MAP testing figures to be a part of that arsenal for awhile.
“Before (MAP) there was no systematic way to monitor individual progress on state standards,” said Ester Corral-Carlson, the district’s director of assessment.
Monitoring progress on state standards has become increasingly important in recent months when it comes to improving school rankings within the Academic Performance Index (API) – the state’s yardstick for determining the quality of school instruction.
An API score is based on performances on several standardized tests taken by students at the end of each year. Until this year, exams like the Stanford Achievement Test, which compare a student’s performance to that of other students across the nation, were weighed most heavily in API calculations.
Now, the state’s own exam, which evaluates students based on their mastery of specific grade-level skills (called content standards), counts most. Depending on a student’s grade level, 73 to 80 percent of a student’s API score is based on the content standards exams.
“There are other (student assessment) programs out there, but MAP is based on state standards, and that is so useful to us now,” Assistant Superintendent Jacki Horejs said.
MAP tests, which have been used for three years by GUSD and are popular with other districts in and outside of California, get administered three times a year at all district schools. The most recent round started last week and runs until April 4. Although taking the exam reduces already-squeezed classroom instruction time, teachers and parents across the district seem largely in support of the MAP program.
Used, in general, to gauge individual student strengths and weaknesses, MAP test results factor into teacher lesson plans and, now, teacher referrals, too. Last week, Gifted And Talented Education parents successfully urged the district to make referrals into the popular academic enrichment program when students perform high on MAP tests.
Teachers are lauding MAP’s usefulness, too. Two days after tests are taken, teachers can download from a Web site an entire class report detailing the areas in which students are succeeding and struggling.
“When their score pops up and they know right away how they’ve done, that makes a student feel more accountable for their performance,” Corral-Carlson said. “That’s much more effective than testing kids in the spring and not knowing how they’ve done until the middle of the fall (as is the case with most standardized tests).”
Mt. Madonna High School math teacher Jose Franchi calls himself a MAP supporter.
“MAP has improved my ability to differentiate instruction,” Franchi said. “It doesn’t just give you one raw score for math. It breaks a student’s results into about five different areas (such as algebra skills or geometry concepts) and you can see what level they are working at.”
Over at Gilroy High School, social science teacher Kanani Pratt also praises the new system.
“Even though MAP doesn’t test social studies per se, I find the reading results very useful,” Pratt said. “If I know a student’s reading level at the beginning of the year, I know who is going to need more individual attention when they try to understand the material (in textbooks and other readings).”
The feedback is most important for teachers who have students bordering between levels on the API scoring system, especially the lower levels.
When determining API scores, the state gives substantially more points to low-performing students who improve than to high-performers who show improvement. In the case of a student who jumps from the 19th percentile to the 20th, the child is awarded 300 additional API points. For the student who moves from the 79th percentile to the 80th only 125 additional API points are given.
Better test performance still garners higher API scores, but the state’s accountability system awards improvement, not high scores.
Like most new things, MAP has raised other doubts in the district.
At that same GATE meeting this week, one parent complained that a teacher had used a MAP score to determine whether a student would receive a B-plus or an A-minus. District staff asked the parent to meet with the teacher and the principal to rectify the situation.
Another parent questioned how useful it is to test higher-achieving students. Because MAP software can record a student’s prior performance and begin a new test where an old one left off, the exam gets increasingly more difficult. This makes it harder for high-achieving students to significantly improve their score.
The concerned parent said her daughter was talking about holding back answers on the exam so that her score would not go down again.
“There are some disadvantages as with any test,” Trustee Bob Kraemer said. “But the disadvantages pale in comparison when you consider not having that immediate feedback the MAP is giving us.”
Barbara Hardin, a veteran GUSD teacher, is not against testing students, but says a more streamlined approach would help teachers increase the amount of time they spend instructing kids. Hardin noted that another test used by the district to assess student progress – called the Reading and Oral Language Assessment – is administered one student at a time for 35 to 45 minutes. Because teachers have to administer the test, they typically give the other students a “self-directed” activity during that time.
“If your child was in a class, would you prefer they get direct instruction from a teacher, or do work on their own?” Hardin said.
For Rod Kelley parent Christine Hebert, MAP scores – which like other standardized test results are sent home to parents – have found a role in her evaluation of student progress.
“We don’t live and breathe by it, but we do look at it,” Hebert said. “We know some parents who take it very seriously and get worked up over it. I look at it to reconfirm what I believe I already know about my child.”
