NWEA Testing Letter

Dear Elementary and Adolescent Parents, Beginning Monday, September 24th, The Way of the Shepherd will be administering standardized assessments to our 3rd-8th grade children in language, reading, and math. For the past couple of years we have been using NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress MAP assessment. We have enclosed a description of the MAP test at the end of this letter. Because the MAP test is focused on individual students’ progress throughout the school year, educators use it to help teach children at their level and guide them toward success at the end of the year. We continue to learn more about how this data can help us meet the needs of your children. The MAP test can be administered 2-3 times a year. Our fall assessment helps our teachers set annual learning goals for individual students. In the spring, the assessment gauges whether or not students have met their individual learning targets for the year. We may elect to administer the test to some of our students in the winter if we feel we need more data to help meet academic goals. If this occurs, we will let parents of those children know. Each child will take three assessments—reading, language, and mathematics. Each test takes about 45 minutes to an hour, but the assessments are not timed. Only one test will be given to a child each day. Tests will be taken through a secure web browser on school laptops. Remember, this is not a high stakes test, so we will not be prepping children on specific topics, but we will help children familiarize themselves with the ​test format. It is important that children are well rested and eat a good breakfast so that they can be most successful and do their very best. Also, we would love some help encouraging children to perform as best as they are able to ensure we set challenging yet reachable goals. Once again, we will be giving parents access to scores on the MAP assessment. We ask that you prayerfully discern if/how you want to share this data with your children. It is our recommendation that you keep the information private and work with your child’s teacher to set appropriate learning targets and encourage the child’s progress on those topics. Please let us know if you have any further questions or would like more information about the MAP tests. We are looking forward to what NWEA’s MAP assessment will add to our ability to serve your children’s learning in the best ways that we can!