It is crazy to me that nearly half of districts in the US use NWEA MAP assessments.

My entirely serious hypothesis is that MAP drives down scores on the state test.

MAP does not give any item-level analysis or data granular enough to improve instruction.

The standard error is ~1 grade level in middle school, which means it isn’t accurate enough to add much value for instructional grouping or to tell you whether a student is growing as expected.

Teachers misunderstand the data and assume kids haven’t tried hard enough when their scores go down, when it’s actually just because the test isn’t very accurate.

Schools end up giving incentives for NWEA performance because they can see scores right away, but they don’t incentivize the same way for the state test because scores aren’t available for a few months. This teachers kids that the state test is less important.

And most importantly it’s another test three times a year that contributes to test fatigue.