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Tracking student achievement

How do you measure whether students are learning what they need to know, when they need to know it?

To help answer that question, Sun News will spend the coming weeks diving into the Adequate Yearly Progress reports released by Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on Aug. 12.

The goal of the “Step by step” series is to convert the data into a form that’s understandable and in context for members of the community. The series should be something readers can use to gauge the extent to which their schools are providing the kind of high-quality education that historically has been a point of pride in the Northland.

Missouri Assessment Program — What it means

The Missouri Assessment Program is run by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to ensure that the state’s students are learning what they need to know, when they need to know it.

Program success is measured by the communication arts and math exams given every spring to students in third through eighth grades.

State education officials use the exam results to determine whether schools have met student proficiency benchmarks established by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The benchmarks increase every year, and the goal is every student will be proficient by 2014.

School district administrators and teachers use the MAP results to track individual student achievement. Where challenges are identified, educators can then tailor classroom strategies to help each child succeed. School officials often emphasize that the MAP is only one of many tools used to gauge student achievement.

The communication arts test is divided into two major sections: multiple choice and short answer questions that measure core knowledge; and essays, which gauge the student’s ability to apply that basic information.

The test content is based on grade level expectations created to ensure that students meet the state’s standards in each content area.

Communication arts standards

- Speaking and writing standard English

- Reading and evaluating fiction and nonfiction

- Formal writing

- Understanding oral and visual presentations, including debates and lectures

- Discussing ideas and issues

- Evaluating relationships between language and culture

For more information, visit the Practical Parenting Partnerships Web site at www.pppctr.org.

End-of-course exams mean a big change

This year, the state inaugurated end-of-course exams for students in ninth through 12th grade.

The new exams are designed to measure so-called course-level expectations, as opposed to grade-level expectations for students in elementary and middle schools.

This major change means that the 2009 Missouri Assessment Program communication arts and math results at the high school level require a big caveat when compared to previous years.

For one thing, the grade-level tests have no impact on student marks. The EOC exams are required by state regulations to count toward final grades in the class. One of the reasons the EOC exams were established was to motivate students to perform well on the tests.

It’s also important to bear in mind that the EOC tests are administered only to students in algebra 1, biology and English 2 classes. This means that some students were excluded who would have been tested under the previous system.

Finally, the EOC exams are given at the end of each semester, which may mean that some students are better prepared to succeed.

— compiled by Ray Weikal

Do you meet expectations?
An example of a question that might appear on the sixth-grade communication arts portion of the Missouri Assessment Program appears below.

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