12.6.16 Michael Dahlin, NWEA Finding the College of Your Dreams in Three Easy Steps Step 1. Go to sleep. Warm milk before bed sometimes helps with this. Also, running a half marathon. Step 2. Dream about colleges. This part is trickier, since dreams stay mostly outside our control.... Read more
2.18.16 Michael Dahlin, NWEA Measuring Growth and Understanding Negative Growth As a researcher at NWEA, I often answer questions about how to measure and interpret growth using the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) assessment. Measuring student growth with MAP is a lot... Read more
11.13.14 Michael Dahlin, NWEA Using MAP to Predict Proficiency on Summative Assessments NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) assessment serves many purposes, from informing instruction to identifying students for intervention to projecting proficiency on state accountability... Read more
6.12.14 Michael Dahlin, NWEA To Measure a Year’s Growth, Begin with the Student At NWEA, one of the research team’s functions is to provide high-level technical support on a range of assessment issues, including the use and interpretation of the MAP/MPG norms. In that... Read more
8.14.13 Michael Dahlin, NWEA What Percentage of Students Meet their Growth Targets? In NWEA’s norms, about what percentage of students who take MAP assessments typically meet their school year growth goals? This is a tough question to answer, since it’s not something that we... Read more
5.14.13 Michael Dahlin, NWEA Using NWEA Norms to Establish Goals on State Tests Question: How do we use NWEA norms to identify student performance and growth goals around meeting state proficiency standards? Answer: Simply put, we can’t. NWEA performance and growth norms... Read more
3.12.13 Michael Dahlin, NWEA Measurement and Standard Error This morning when I stepped on my bathroom scale and felt that familiar twinge of guilt and disappointment, I quickly reminded myself that bathroom scales are imperfect measuring devices. In all... Read more
10.29.12 Michael Dahlin, NWEA Normal vs. Necessary Academic Growth “How is it possible that our students are showing good growth on the MAP test but failing to meet proficiency on our state test?” This question arises occasionally with NWEA partner school... Read more
10.2.12 Michael Dahlin, NWEA Do the percentiles reported on MAP reports equate to specific standard scores? Question: Do the percentiles reported on MAP reports equate to specific standard scores, as one would normally find in a normal distribution of scores (Bell Curve)? E.g., does the 16th percentile... Read more
9.26.11 Michael Dahlin, NWEA What Does Regression to the Mean Mean? We’ve been encouraged by the attention received thus far from journalists, bloggers, and the general public about our study, “Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top... Read more
