Grades K-8- NWEA MAP (Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress)

MAP is a computer-based assessment in which we measure individual student progress and school wide progress in Reading and Math. Each test takes approximately 1 hour and measures a student’s and the school’s achievement against national norms.  The ability to receive immediate feedback, show growth within a school year and over time, and compare to national norms are significant benefits of the MAP test.

For further reading on the NWEA MAP assessment, please click on this link: http://www.nwea.org/sites/www.nwea.org/files/resources/ParentToolkit.pdf.

Grades 3-8 DCAS (Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System)

DCAS is the state mandated on-line assessment.  As with the NWEA, DCAS allows teachers and students immediate feedback and measures a student’s growth within a school year. It also provides teachers with grade level information about student achievement compared to state standards to better target instruction to meet the diverse needs of their students.   It is important to remember that this first assessment is similar to a pretest. We should expect scores to improve over the school year as students learn more of the skills and knowledge at their grade level. 

For further reading on the DCAS state assessment, please click on this link:  http://de.portal.airast.org/resources/DE_Family_brochure.pdf.

Grades 1-4 Universal Math Screeners

These math screeners are paper and pencil assessments developed by the State of Delaware, which we use to note a child’s level of understanding in math concepts and skills at a particular grade level. Portions of this assessment are administered in a whole class setting, and others are administered one-on-one.

  Delaware Universal Screening Tool for Number Sense in Mathematics:The Delaware mathematics community has designed an elementary, cross-curricular, "universal screening tool" that will enable districts to meet the Response to Intervention (RtI) guidelines for diagnostic monitoring of all students. At each grade level, the screening tool is given three times per year and offers developmental measures of student understandings of critical content in the numeric reasoning strand. The Delaware Universal Screening Tool for Number Sense can be utilized in conjunction with curriculum-embedded checkpoints to monitor the progress of individual students on a common set of prioritized benchmarks defined by the Delaware standards. This tool was designed to ensure a successful implementation for varied curriculum resources.

We recommend the use of the Delaware Universal Screening tool as a complementary measure to the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System (DCAS) for a number of reasons. First, this tool is carefully designed to assess the trajectory of student learning in an essential domain within each academic year and across multiple years and will, therefore, satisfy the federal requirements for Response to Intervention. Second, implementing and scoring this tool is an important aspect of professional learning for teachers charged with teaching mathematics in the elementary and early middle grades. Utilizing this tool will, we believe, enable teachers to become more closely observant of their students’ thinking and more skillful in their use of formative assessment in their classrooms on a daily basis.

In a collaborative effort, teachers can gather to review assessment results and analyze student work allowing schools and districts to better determine and address the intervention needs of students who are struggling to meet grade level expectations (GLEs). Professional learning opportunities can focus on improving core instruction and the possibilities for tiered intervention settings to address students’ strengths and weaknesses.

DIBELS is a series of 1 minute assessments which can indicate an area of need in reading. This is used to screen for letter/sound recognition, decoding and blending skills, oral reading fluency and retelling abilities. These are administered in a one-on-one setting.

For further reading on the Dibels assessments, please click on this link:  https://dibels.org/dibels.html.