A word on Assessments

During the first full 2 weeks of the school year, all of our district's elementary students will be assessed K-5 through the use of two assessment tools; AIMSweb and MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) testing.  Both assessments are used to help teachers know where students are in terms of their learning.  AIMSweb contains a progress monitoring component which allows teachers to study data on students frequently to assure that if mid-course corrections need to be made, they can be.  All students will be assessed using AIMSweb three times a year, and MAP testing has that same ability.  Because we are focused on high levels of student learning for all students, the purpose of these assessments are primarily to inform us.  When certain grade level targets are not where we determine they should be, we use this data to plan accordingly within grade level teams. 

Defining MAP: MAP is used to measure a student's progress or growth in school.  They are important to teachers because they let teachers know where a student's strengths are and if help is needed in any specific areas.  Teachers use this information to help them guide instruction in the classroom.  If you have ever used a growth chart in your home to show how much your child has grown from one year to the next, this will help you understand the scale MAP uses to measure your child's academic progress.  Called the RIT scale (Rasch unIT), it is an equal-interval scale much like feet and inches on a yardstick.  It is used to chart your child's academic growth from year to year.  RIT scores typically start at the 140 to 190 level in 3rd grade and progress to the 240 to 300 level by high school

Defining AIMSweb: AIMSweb is a benchmark and progress monitoring system based on direct, frequent and continuous student assessment. The results are reported to students, parents, teachers and administrators via a web-based data management and reporting system to determine how best to adjust teaching and respond to an individual students needs.


Special School District, St. Louis, Missouri from Kerri O'Meara on Vimeo.