The RIT scale is a scale of item difficulty, and it is grade-independent. A 2nd grader and a 7th grader with the same RIT score are both answering items of the same level of difficulty. However, when testing, the item content seen by the 2nd grader will be different from the item content seen by the 7th grader because the content that is included in the MAP Growth K-2 test is different from the math content included in the MAP Growth 6+ test. The math content included in the K-2 test (for example, basic concepts of arithmetic) is much more basic than the content included in the 6+ math test (for example, probability and statistics, algebra). The second grader with the high RIT score is probably responding to very difficult items of basic arithmetic, but we would not be able to infer anything about their achievement in the content areas not tested by the K-2 test. For more information about the RIT scale, see What is the RIT scale?
Test items are selected during the test to match student performance, not to match a specific grade level.
Grade level norms
The Comparative Data to Inform Instructional Decisions document provides a full perspective of all comparative scores across grade levels. This can help spark discussion about effective instructional strategies to use with any given student.
The NWEA Norms Study provides percentile rankings that represent how well a student performs compared to other students in a nationwide norm sample for their grade.
See Where can I find the Norms Study and related documents? for links to download these norms documents.
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