E U R O P E A N L E A G U E F O R M I D D L E L E V E L E D U C A T I O N
Culture of Data Use: NWEA’ s MAP Growth By Patricia Reeder, M. Ed., Ed. S.
“ I don’ t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures... I divide the world into the learners and the non-learners.” – Benjamin Barber
The research reviews of student growth and school improvement repeatedly feature a small, but powerful number of strategies. These include: a strong data culture, use of data to inform instruction and empowering students through creating challenging, but obtainable goals. So how can these strategies help all students become learners? And how can your MAP results, reports and resources become central tools for this work?
Just as we know and understand the effect of school culture on learning, a school’ s culture of data use also should reflect strategic, agreed upon processes that create transparency and common ownership and use of student data. When this happens within a school, collective efficacy grows and many decisions become data-based, instead of intuitive or only individually driven. Student growth and achievement belongs to everyone.
While a school may use multiple measures within data conversations, MAP Growth can connect student achievement vertically and across all curriculum strands. The NWEA Tri-Annual Data Conversation, provides a protocol that can systematize this work.
The extended adaptive functionality of MAP Growth, and the RIT scale, allow growth to be calculated over time, without regard to grade level. When school teams extend operational definitions of the various types of growth, metrics can define learning gaps, and enriched learners can be challenged at their own level. MAP Growth results point toward each student’ s Zone of Proximal Development for formative instructional planning. These metrics can then be used with the Student Profile and the Learning Continuum to target and personalize the educational experience.
“ Although we readily acknowledge the power of goals in our own lives, they remain the single most underestimated and underused means of improving student learning minute by minute and day to day in the classroom”
-Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom by Moss and Brookhart
Goal setting as formative practice focuses student and teacher effort and provides metrics for measurement. When asked how one has obtained a goal, the typical response involves incremental steps and metrics of measurement. MAP Growth provides learning statements for incremental progress as well as growth norms to measure progress towards achievement levels. Resources such as the Student Profile bring growth metrics, content and goal planning together in one place.
During the ELMLE NWEA sessions, participants will deepen their understanding of student, class and school level reports as they focus on growth metrics and goal setting within their school culture of data use, so all students become“ learners.”
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