Madison Public School Assessment Plan
Assessment Types:
These are the major assessments used to collect data and make curricular and instructional decisions at Madison Public School. The District reserves the right to change or modify this list at any time, with no prior notice, to better assess the students.
1. NeSA – the state accountability assessment that determines if a student is classified as below, meets, or exceeds state standards. This is administered in the area of Language Arts and Mathematics in grades 3 – 8. Science is also administered at 5th and 8th grades. A new TDA has been added to the Language Arts portion of the assessment to eliminate the writing portion. This is administered 5th – 8th grades currently. The NeSA assessments are given in late March through early May every school year.
2. MAP – a norm reference test that is given to grades kindergarten – 11th that measures the students’ progress and depth of knowledge in Reading, Math, Language Arts, and Science. The district reserves the right to modify the grade levels and frequency at which MAPS is administered with no prior change to this plan as determined by the administrative team.
3. DIBELS – used in grades Kindergarten – 6th to determine if students are meeting the benchmarks or if they are at risk. If they are at risk, additional intervention may be required. This can be used in both reading and math. Progress monitoring can be utilized if determined to be necessary by the staff.
4. ACT – used for college entrance. New in the Spring of 2017 the ACT will now be the primary means by which the state of Nebraska will assess the 11th graders and determine if they are below, meeting, or exceeding state standards. This is administered in the Spring of each year over a two-week period.
5. ELPA21 – (changed spring 2016 formerly ELDA) the assessment used to measure the level at which ELL students are performing and measuring the growth from year to year to determine if the student still needs to receive ELL services. This test assigns a level to each student that takes it. The levels go from one to five, with level four needing to be achieved to exit the ELL program or a rating of proficient on the NeSA Reading assessment.
6. Los Links –used to determine whether an incoming student needs to receive English language services due to a second language being the primary language used at home.
7. Regular classroom assessments - can be considered assessment given by the teacher to measure if mastery of a concept has been achieved. These are given at different time intervals throughout the week and are determined by the teacher.
Method of notifying parents or guardians:
It is the responsibility of Madison Public Schools to distribute assessment results to parents or guardians in an effective manner. Below are the two main ways in which we distribute assessment results that are not regular classroom assessment.
1. Parent teacher conferences – we meet face to face with parents and go over the assessment results and send a copy home with them. The results shared depends on when the results are released or available for each assessment. We have parent teacher conferences twice during the school year.
2. Mail - we send the result directly to parents with a letter that explains what they are receiving and why. The results shared depends on when the results are released or available for each assessment. This is typically used when assessment results are outside the window of parent teacher conferences.