If you change the weeks of instruction in your MAP Growth settings, you will likely see a corresponding change in percentiles and growth projections on reports for that term. You may also see changes in projected proficiency for some students. RIT scores, however, will not change. If your school's actual number of instructional weeks before testing is different by 1 or 2 weeks, the effects on percentiles and growth projections are small. If the difference will be larger than 2 weeks, you should interpret your students' growth projections accordingly.
How weeks of instruction affect status norms (percentiles)
Status norms provide a context for knowing how a student’s score at a single point in time compares to other U.S. students in that grade who have received the same amount of instruction. For example, if we have 2 students who got the same RIT score, but one student had 8 more weeks of instruction than the other, the student who had more instruction would typically have a lower percentile ranking for the same RIT score. This is because we expect that students with more instructional time tend to achieve higher RIT scores.
How weeks of instruction affect growth norms (growth projections)
Growth norms change with instructional weeks in that, all other things being equal, more growth tends to occur over a span of more weeks. For example, a 5th grader student with 16 weeks of instruction between math MAP Growth test administrations would be expected to show more growth than a similar student with only 8 weeks of instruction between test administrations.
How weeks of instruction affect projected proficiency
See How do reports calculate projected proficiency?
Do weeks of instruction affect user norms?
When you change weeks of instruction in MAP, this will not change the percentiles or growth projections for reports data based on user norms. The subjects that have user norms instead of full norms include Spanish Reading and course-specific math, among others. Refer to Which grades, subjects, and terms have status norms and growth norms? for more information.
If a district and schools have different weeks of instruction, what will be used for reports?
The individual school test window will be used for reporting, and not the district test window.
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