Smarter Balanced linking study and 2020 Comparative Data

Available grades 

Smarter Balanced has assessments for grades 3-8 and a high school assessment that is designed for 11th grade but may be administered in grades 9-12. NWEA's linking study has data for grades 3-8. We do not currently have linking cut scores available for the high school (11th grade) Smarter Balanced assessment, because we did not have a large enough sample size of students who took both the SBAC 11th grade test and MAP Growth.

As an alternative for partner districts looking for guidance on determining whether their high school students are college and career ready, we have a MAP Growth College Readiness Benchmarks study available on NWEA.org.

 
Achievement levels 

The Smarter Balanced assessments have 4 achievement levels. Level 3 roughly correlates with being on track for college and career readiness (CCR). Different states may use different names for the levels.

For more information, see: 

• Linking Study Report: Predicting Performance on the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments based on NWEA MAP Growth Scores
• MAP Growth College Readiness Benchmarks Study summary