Explaining assessment data to families can be challenging. Their focus is often on letter grades and whether their child is passing or failing. When family-teacher conferences roll around, they’re rarely long enough to cover everything, leaving assessment data to fall by the wayside. And both families and kids may be confused about why MAP® Growth™ isn’t the same as a state-level, year-end assessment.

That’s why we worked closely with Learning Heroes to create the MAP Growth Family Report, a new tool that can make these critical conversations more constructive. While it’s currently only available in English, a Spanish translation is available for reference.

Here’s how the Family Report can help.

• Written for family members. Intended specifically for parents and guardians, the Family Report focuses on what families value most: clear information on a student’s performance—and how to encourage learning and growth
• Designed to level set. A brief introduction explains the goal of the report, what MAP Growth is, and why students take MAP Growth. It also defines “achievement,” “growth,” and “RIT score,” so everyone’s on the same page from the start
• Easy to navigate. A student’s progress is broken down by subject, while graphs show individual achievement and growth compared to the national average and, when possible, compared to local state standards
• Clearly connected to achievement. Families are shown whether a student is on track to perform well on state-level or other upcoming assessments, like the ACT, so they can get a clear sense of how well a student is moving toward achieving bigger goals, like being ready for college
• Actionable. A list of questions is included to get the conversation started. Families are also led to our website to learn more about MAP Growth
• Printer friendly. Teachers can quickly print reports for an entire classroom of students, so it’s easy for them to send reports home

For more help sharing assessment data with families, take a look at our family guide to MAP Growth and the following Teach. Learn. Grow. posts: “Five tips for setting up student-led parent-teacher conferences” and “How NOT to get overwhelmed by data: Teacher reports to use throughout the year.”