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
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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

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Percentile Ranks
Top of the class
Juanito, as an example, is a Grade 4 student in a
reading class of exactly 100 students.
Juanitos 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 RANK because it represents
a relative standing, i.e., it identifies what
percentage of Juanitos classmates scored the
same as or lower than him.
Bottom of the class
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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.
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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

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Proficiency Standards for MSA
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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

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FAQs by Parents

• Why does my child get 2 different scores?
• What do these scores mean?
• Which score is most important?

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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

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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

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Which score is most important?

• MSA scores are only one snapshot of a childs
  performance
• Both scores give an important piece of
  information, but the childs 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