Reporting MSA Results to Parents

1. Reporting MSA Results to Parents Office of Shared Accountability October, 2003

2. General Facts about MSA • Resources from MSDE about the Maryland School Assessment can be found on the internet: • www.marylandpublicschools.org • www.mdk12.org

3. Design of the MSA Norm-Referenced Test (NRT) Stanford 10 and Terranova Second Edition Criterion-Referenced Test (CRT) Maryland items

4. Understanding MSA Scores • Norm-referenced scores • Compare performance to a group of peers • Report as a percentile rank • Criterion-referenced scores • Compare performance to an established standard • Report as a category based on a scale score

5. Percentile Ranks Top of the class Juanito, as an example, is a Grade 4 student in a reading class of exactly 100 students. Juanito’s results on a reading test places him 74th from the bottom of his class. 74th Because there are 100 students in his group, Juanito then performed as well as or better than 74 percent of his classmates. The 74 is a PERCENTILE RANKbecause it represents a relative standing, i.e., it identifies what percentage of Juanito’s classmates scored the same as or lower than him. Bottom of the class

6. 1 Percentile ranks do not represent equivalent amounts of ability along the percentile rank scale. There is a smaller difference in achievement among students in the 45th to 50th percentile ranks than there is among students in the 5th to the 10th (or in the 95th to the 99th) percentile ranks, even though the percentile rank difference in each case is five. 1 20 10 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 99 2 Percentile ranks cannot be averaged. Interpretation of Percentile Ranks In a normal distribution, there is a piling up of scores between the 25th and the 75th percentile ranks and a tailing off at either end.

7. Scale Scores • Vendors contracting with MSDE use mathematical formulas to analyze the performance of test items and create a scale • For MSA, the scale is from 0 to 800 • For each grade and content area, MSDE has identified scale scores that fit into the categories of Basic, Proficient, and Advanced

8. Proficiency Standards for MSA

9. Alternate MSA (Alt-MSA) • Alternate assessment to MSA for students in life skills programs; replaces IMAP • Not a nationally normed test, thus only proficiency levels will be reported • Proficiency levels for Alt-MSA are also categorized as basic, proficient, and advanced

10. FAQs by Parents • Why does my child get 2 different scores? • What do these scores mean? • Which score is most important?

11. Why 2 different scores? • Decision by Maryland State Department of Education to comply with No Child Left Behind Mandates • Enables parents to compare to national group as well as proficiency relative to state standards

12. What do these scores mean? • NRT score: Percentile Rank • How a child performed in reading and mathematics compared to other students in the nation • CRT score: Proficiency Level • How well a child has learned the reading and math content that Maryland has determined all students should know • The state goal is for all students to perform at the proficient or advanced level

13. Which score is most important? • MSA scores are only one “snapshot” of a child’s performance • Both scores give an important piece of information, but the child’s performance in school also offers important information to parents • Neither score is more important to a parent; the CRT score is the most important for state accountability mandates