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Over the past couple of weeks, many of our students have taken an assessment called the NWEA Measures of Academic Progress. This is one of our most effective assessments to help our teachers target instruction more effectively, and I want to share our “why” about the importance of the NWEA with you.
The NWEA Measures of Academic Performance (hereafter called “the NWEA”) is an adaptive assessment. An adaptive assessment is tailored specifically to each student based on their performance on previous items on the assessment. More specifically, if a student misses a series of questions, the assessment moves the difficulty of the questions down a level and if a student passes a series of questions, the assessment moves the difficulty of its questions up a level. This provides helpful information on a student’s true knowledge and mastery level of the material. Ray-Pec uses the NWEA to identify a student’s instructional level and skill set in the areas of reading and mathematics. The assessment reports give our teachers student-specific information on their achievement in various strands within math and English that allows our teachers to see specific areas of strengths and needs.
In the area of reading, the NWEA is given two to three times a year to students in grades K-8 and also to students in English 9th, English 10th, and English 11th grade. In the area of math, it is given two to three times per year to all students in grades K-8 as well as high school students enrolled in Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2. The NWEA provides information to help teachers pinpoint specific skills of students needing intervention, differentiate tiers of instruction, and monitor progress. The NWEA reading assessment is also used to help screen for dyslexia in grades K-3.
More than ever, our students need our teachers to have access to valid, reliable data to inform them about how to best focus instructional planning. The NWEA is a very helpful tool to accomplish that. It is one of the data points many of our teachers reviewed during the September 19 collaboration and planning day.
We feel the NWEA is one of the best tools to monitor student learning growth in math and reading and to plan instructional goals based on those assessments. Because of its advantages in measuring student academic growth in reading and math, the NWEA is the measure that our Strategic Plan is focused upon. It is another way we are seeking to improve our instructional practices and use timely, impactful data to get there.
Thank you for entrusting your children to the Ray-Pec School District,
Mike
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