Assessments

There are several ways to learn more about the MAP assessments:

• Explore additional learning resources on NWEA’s YouTube channel for a variety of MAP Growth videos and tutorials.
• NWEA’s Susan Klassen hosts free Data Dig webinars following each testing term – Fall, Winter, and Spring. Ensure NWEA has the correct contact information on your MAP website to stay informed of all learning opportunities and updates. Our office will also forward the email invitations to attend.
• NWEA’s Susan Klassen offers free, one hour, Data Consults to all CMU partner schools. These data consults can be arranged directly with Susan at susan.klassen@nwea.org.
• NWEA hosts free national webinars and national professional learning opportunities.
• Ensure NWEA has the correct contact information on your MAP website to stay informed of all learning opportunities and updates.
• The Help Center on the MAP site.
• The Center purchased professional development content for our partners that can be found on the NWEA website: MAP Growth Foundations Online and MAP Reading Fluency Foundations Online.
• All of our office’s professional learning events are available on our Upcoming Events page.

The fall and spring MAP Growth assessment windows can be found at www.TheCenterForCharters.org/AssessmentWindows.

For winter testing, schools will notify our office if and when they would prefer to test via an Epicenter task. The MAP Growth Winter Testing Window Choice is due on November 11, 2026. This Epicenter task provides the opportunity for schools to choose when the winter test window will open and close. Alternatively, schools will also have the option to indicate that they will not administer the MAP Growth assessment during the winter.

For additional assessment compliance support, our office provides assessment windows and assessment-related submission requirements in the Assessment Windows and Master Calendar of Reporting Requirements Assessment Guide.

MAP Growth testing is not required by our office during the winter. However, many schools choose to administer MAP Growth during the winter to check students’ progress mid-year.

Schools will notify our office if and when they would prefer to test via Epicenter task. The MAP Growth Winter Testing Window Choice due on November 11, 2026. This Epicenter task provides the opportunity for schools to choose when the winter test window will open and close. Alternatively, schools will also have the option to indicate that they will not administer the MAP Growth assessment during the winter.

To establish an optimal environment for the collection of achievement and growth data, our office utilizes NWEA’s instructional week defaults for test windows: four weeks of instruction prior to administration of the fall assessment, twenty weeks of instruction prior to winter test administration, and thirty-two weeks of instruction prior to spring test administration. Therefore, no changes can be made to the fall or spring window.

Please see the MAP Assessment Requirements and Best Practices document for a full description of the assessment administration requirements and best practices, and watch the Establishing Exceptional Assessment Environments video.

Please see Section 7b; Educational Goal and Related Measures and Section 7e; Methods of Pupil Assessment of your charter contract for the grade levels and subject areas you are required to assess.

Please see the MAP Assessment Requirements and Best Practices for a full description of student accommodations.

• Note: Text-to-Speech (TTS) may be utilized for the reading assessment for answer choices, question directions or questions/prompts. TTS may not be utilized for reading passages. If TTS for reading passages is represented as a need in a student’s IEP or 504 Plan, the student must be exempted from the reading assessment. This exemption must be documented on the Assessment Coordinator Verification Form (Form A2). This exemption is appropriate for a very small number of students (estimated to be approximately 1-2 percent of students with disabilities participating in general assessment; this number is not a cap but an anticipated percentage of student need).
• TTS may be utilized for the math assessment for answer choices, question directions and questions/prompts, and reading passages.

Please see NWEA’s Accessibility & Accommodations FAQ for a full description of student accommodations as recommended by NWEA.

Our office obtains the number of students who completed the assessments from the MAP site, enrollment provided by the school on the Assessment Coordinator Verification form, as well as school-entered enrollment information from MSDS to complete participation calculations.

Extenuating circumstances (hospitalization, incarceration, etc.) prohibiting students from completing the assessment must be noted on the Assessment Coordinator Verification form. Our office may require additional documentation during the participation calculation process for clarification.

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The Assessment Coordinator Verification form involves a critical process designed to ensure that MAP reports include the test data for all students. To ensure reports holistically demonstrate the achievement and growth for every student you serve, certain student data elements must be accurate and complete on the NWEA website. Prior to submitting Form A2, ensure accurate completion of all students’:

• First and last names
• 10-digit Unique Identification Code (UIC)
• Birthdate
• Grade level
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• School of Record
• Class
• Current Term

If any of the required student demographic information is missing or incomplete, the form will not be accepted in Epicenter. For support with this process, view the Guidance for Verifying Student Data Elements for Form A2 video and/or question 11 below.

Note: This process takes time. Please begin this process at the beginning of the test window and submit Form A2 early to allow time for corrections if needed.

When creating and uploading the Class Roster File (CRF):

• Format the Student ID column as “Text” to ensure Excel does not automatically drop leading zeroes when saving, opening and/or uploading the CRF to NWEA’s MAP site.

When opening a Students by District report or a CRF:

• Please refer to the Guidance for Verifying and Correcting Students Data Elements for Form A2 video and/or the written guidance provided below.

1. Right-click on the .csv file and select Open with… Select Notepad.
2. With the file open in Notepad, Select File => Save As.
3. Remove the .csv from the file name and make sure the type is text.
4. Close the file in Notepad.
5. Open Excel.
6. Go to File => Open => go to folder where the file has been saved. NOTE: if the file isn’t shown, select the file type (which will probably say All Excel Files…) and using the drop-down box, select All Files.
7. Select the text file and open. A Text Import Wizard will pop up. Select ‘Delimited’ as the file type. Check the box; ‘My data has headers,’ then Next.
8. Click on the ‘comma’ box under delimiters, then Next.
9. Scroll through the file and locate the UIC in the ‘Student ID’ field. Highlight the column and select ‘Text’ in the Column Data Format box. Click Finish.
10. In the spreadsheet that opens, find the Student ID field, and highlight the entire column.
11. Right Click, select ‘Format Cells.’
12. Go to the number tab and select ‘Text.’ Hit OK, then save the file as an Excel sheet.

The NWEA MAP 2025 National Norms (spring achievement measures) are:

Grade	MAP Reading Student Achievement Norms	MAP Math Student Achievement Norms
3	194	199
4	202	210
5	208	216
6	212	220
7	215	224
8	218	229

For additional information on NWEA’s norms, please see the resources listed in FAQ #13.

The NWEA MAP Growth Norms provide a national frame of reference for student achievement and growth. These norms are based on a large, representative sample of 13.8 million students from across the United States and are updated periodically to reflect changes in student performance and demographics. Below are links to resources for additional information:

• Webinar: MAP Growth Norms 2025: What’s Next, What Matters
• Webinar Presentation Slides: MAP Growth Norms 2025: What’s Next, What Matters
• Norms Overview with printable downloads
• Connections Article – Introducing the NEW! MAP Growth 2025 National Norms
• Norms Toolkit
• Goal Setting Infographic

No more than five percent of the students required to test per the charter contract may be retested during the fall or spring assessment window.

Please see the MAP Assessment Requirements and Best Practices document for a full description of the retesting requirements and best practices.

No. MAP Growth is not a proficiency measure. MAP Growth is a nationally normed assessment that measures student achievement and growth over time using RIT scores and percentiles. In Michigan, the Michigan Department of Education determines 3-8th grade proficiency based on the state assessment, M-STEP, and Michigan’s academic standards.

NWEA has conducted a linking study between MAP Growth and M-STEP. This study identifies the MAP Growth RIT scores and percentiles associated with proficiency on M-STEP. These linking study results can help schools understand how MAP Growth performance may relate to Michigan’s state proficiency expectations, but MAP Growth itself does not determine whether a student is proficient according to MDE standards. The NWEA Linking Study is available here.

No. It is a misconception that 100% of students are expected to meet or exceed their MAP Growth projection. MAP Growth projections are based on national growth norms and show the typical amount of growth made by similar students — students in the same grade, subject, starting RIT range, and instructional period.

Because the projection represents typical growth, not a guaranteed target, some students will exceed their projection, some will meet it, and some will fall below it. As a general guide, if approximately 50% of students meet or exceed their projected growth, the group is growing at about the rate expected compared with similar students nationally. If closer to 40% of students meet or exceed projected growth, this indicates growth below typical expectations and should prompt closer review. If approximately 60% or more of students meet or exceed projected growth, this suggests stronger-than-typical growth for the group.

It is also important to remember that students who are performing below grade-level expectations must exceed their projected growth to close achievement gaps over time. Meeting projected growth means a student is growing similarly to academic peers, but students who are behind need accelerated growth to catch up.

Not necessarily. While it is important to recognize student effort and progress, not all growth has the same meaning. A student may show growth from fall to spring, but that growth may or may not be enough to keep the student on track, close gaps, or move toward grade-level expectations.

This is why schools should distinguish between normal growth and necessary growth. Normal growth refers to the typical amount of growth expected for similar students nationally. Necessary growth refers to the amount of growth a student needs to reach a specific goal, such as catching up to grade-level expectations, maintaining current performance, or moving into a higher achievement range.

One helpful way to think about growth is:

Catch-up growth: Students who are performing below grade-level expectations often need to exceed typical growth to close achievement gaps over time.

Keep-up growth: Students who are currently on track need to make enough growth to maintain their achievement level and remain on track.

Move-up growth: Students who are already meeting expectations may need continued strong growth to move into a higher achievement range or reach more advanced goals.

For this reason, the statement “growth is growth” can be misleading. Growth should be celebrated, but it should also be interpreted in context. Schools should ask, “Was the growth enough for this student’s starting point and learning goal?” MAP Growth data is most useful when it helps educators identify whether students are making typical growth, accelerated growth, or growth that may not yet be sufficient to meet long-term academic goals.

No. A RIT score should not be interpreted as a mastery score. MAP Growth is an adaptive assessment, and the RIT score represents an estimate of a student’s instructional level at that point in time. In other words, the RIT score helps identify the student’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) — the range where instruction is likely to be appropriately challenging.

A student’s RIT score can help teachers understand what skills a student may be ready to learn next, but it does not mean the student has mastered every skill below that score or is ready for every skill above it. MAP Growth results should be used as a starting point for instructional planning, along with classroom evidence, curriculum-based assessments, teacher observations, and student work.

A helpful way to explain this misconception is: RIT does not equal mastery. RIT helps identify readiness for instruction.