Using NWEA MAP Growth Assessments in APPR Plans - Approved Options for Education Law §3012-d for the 2020-21 School Year

Oct 3, 2026

Provides approved options for using NWEA MAP Growth assessments under Education Law §3012-d for the 2020-21 school year, including MAP Growth and MAP Growth K-2. Explains how growth models use value-added results and student growth norms to set year-equivalent goals, and how a 1.6 standard error band (≈6.8 RIT points for many students) prevents unfair Ineffective ratings. Describes EA’s aggregation for teacher, grade, and school levels and translation of results to the 0-20 HEDI scale for APPR and SLO implementation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time10 min

AccessFree to download

Overview

Growth models and partnerships

NWEA MAP Growth Assessments in Student Learning Objectives

Growth goals and norms

Standard error band rationale

SLO scoring and aggregation

Using NWEA MAP Growth Assessments in APPR Plans Approved Options for Education Law §3012-d for the 2020-21 School Year February 2021 Overview In 2015, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) approved NWEA™ proposals for inclusion on the Education Law §3012-d “Approved List of Assessments to be Used with SLOs” and “Approved List of Supplemental Assessments to be used with Growth Models.” The NWEA proposals included MAP® Growth and MAP Growth K-2 assessments. Under the growth models option, NWEA recommends that districts use value-added results to quantify the extent to which educators affected student growth over the course of a year. NYSED requires districts to set goals for students that are equivalent to a year’s worth of academic growth; for this purpose, NWEA recommends that schools use the 2015 student growth norms from NWEA as the basis for measuring a year of growth, with a reasonable confidence band included around each student’s individualized growth norm. Each of these approaches will be described in greater detail in the following sections. NWEA is partnering with Education Analytics, Inc. (EA), anon-profit organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, that works with educators across the country to help make decisions based on student testing data that are fair, rigorous, and technically defensible. EA has provided growth model results using NWEA MAP Growth assessment data to approximately 50 New York districts per year since 2012. Districts that elect to participate and follow EA’s process will receive both the growth model and SLO results, as well as translations of those results to a default 0-20 HEDI scale. These resultswillbeavailableforteacherswhoteachstudentsingrades K – 10 in mathematics, reading, and language usage, and for the 2019-20 school year are included in your MAP subscription. EA will provide growth model and SLO results, translated into 0-20 point HEDI scores, at the following levels of aggregation: Teacher-level • Results for all subjects combined • Results for individual subjects • Results for reading and language usage combined Grade-level • Results for all subjects combined • Results for individual subjects • Results for reading and language usage combined School-level • Results for all subjects combined • Results for individual subjects • Results for reading and language usage 1 NWEA MAP Growth Assessments in Student Learning Objectives To adhere to NYSED’s SLO guidelines,student growth goals need to be equivalent to a year’s worth of growth, and aggregations of student performance relative to those year-long goals must adhere to the State’s 0-20 point HEDI translation framework. These two conditions present some challenges to establishing fair and reasonable growth goals for students and educators. However, based on data from prior years, NWEA recommends the following approach. The NWEA nationally representative fall-to-spring student growth norms should be used as the basis for growth goals for educator SLOs. This normative data provides educators with information about the average growth observed for students based on their grade, subject, starting RIT score, and the number of instructional weeks between test events, and provides realistic growth expectations for students over the course of the year. Upon completion of fall testing, each student receives a fall-to-spring growth projection that is based on the norming data; these projections are available to all educators in standard NWEA reports, so educators will know at the start of the year what the individualized growth goal is for each of their students. However, if we simply computed the percentage of students in a classroom whose fall-to-spring growth met or surpassed the growth norms, a significant percentage of teachers would receive an Ineffective APPR rating. This is because NYSED has established that an Ineffective rating equates to 0-59% of students meeting their year-long

FAQs

What assessments are included in NWEA’s approved proposals under Education Law §3012-d?

The proposals include MAP Growth and MAP Growth K-2 assessments, approved for inclusion on the Education Law §3012-d approved lists for use with SLOs and growth models.

How are year-equivalent growth goals determined for SLOs?

SLO growth goals are based on the nationally representative fall-to-spring student growth norms, using grade, subject, starting RIT score, and instructional weeks between testing events.

Why does NWEA recommend using a growth goal band when evaluating teacher impact?

Using a band around the growth norms (1.6 standard errors of growth) accounts for statistical uncertainty, so students are marked as meeting their growth goal unless their growth is statistically different from the norm.

Oct 3, 2026

Uploaded by Jordan Avery