Common Challenges with NWEA Map® Assessments and How Exact Path Can Help

In my last blog post “How Exact Path Can Maximize the Value You Gain from Your NWEA Map® Assessments”, we explored how Edmentum International’s Exact Path individualized learning solution could harness the power within the NWEA Map® Rasch unit (RIT) scores. In this blog, we will delve deeper and look at specific questions which are often asked by schools:

1. What does the NWEA Map Assessment and Exact Path partnership mean for schools?

Uploading your school’s NWEA Map Assessment results to Exact Path is easy to do and removes all elements of manual analysis that you’d need to do to understand what the scores mean for your class. In a matter of minutes (which is how long the upload takes), it will help you easily distill the information that each student’s Rasch unit (RIT) scores contains, and gives you a system-generated learning path per student to take their learning forward from whatever starting point they are at.

From a student perspective, Exact Path delivers truly personalized learning. A student’s learning path delivers the next four skills that that student has to master. For each skill, it provides instructional material, practice tasks and quizzes, and when all four skills have been completed, there’s a Progress Check for the student to take to ensure subject mastery.

In summary, Exact Path takes the RIT score and lets you, as the teacher, understand what it means in real terms. It takes the static score as a starting point, and from it, creates a dynamic, individualized learning plan, complete with instructional content, to drive learning forward, based on mastery, from thereon in.

2. Do schools have to wait for the next NWEA Map® Assessment window to start using Exact Path?

Exact Path can only create its individualized learning paths from an assessment, be that from NWEA Map®, from Renaissance Star, or from its own diagnostic assessment.

To avoid waiting for the next assessment window, however, your latest assessment results can be uploaded. Whilst this is not ideal as there could be some difference in where your students were then and where they are now, this will allow you to use the solution meaningfully immediately.

3. From uploading my NWEA Map RIT scores to Exact Path, I can see my students are working at different levels. How can Exact Path help me teach all these students with very differing needs?

As a teacher, you’ll be able to see where individual students are with their learning. If they are struggling, you can group similar students together to target in-class re-teaching and intervention exercises. If they are progressing strongly, you can provide additional challenges from within Exact Path for their enrichment.

As time moves on and students master the skills, you will see progress in real time via Exact Path. A lot of change can take place between one NWEA Map® Assessment and the next – the windows most schools opt for are the new academic year window, the one in January and the one in Spring – but Exact Path constantly adapts with progress made, ensuring each lesson is targeted to the student’s learning needs.

4. Can I upload assessment data several times each year, or am I restricted to the NWEA Map® Assessment windows?

Schools can upload assessment data up to 4 times per year. The main upload is limited to the NWEA Map® Assessment windows, however, amendments, i.e. adding in a missing student, can be undertaken as and when required.

5. How many hours per week do you recommend using Exact Path for to see results?

As a general rule, we recommend students to use Exact Path for a minimum of 30 minutes per subject per week in order to see academic improvement. If students are working below grade, we would encourage them to use it for longer periods of time to catch up.

I hope the answers above have helped you understand how Exact Path can give you the real-time tools and resources to offer every child in your class the right lesson, at the right level at just the right time. If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact us by phone on +44 (0)1572 492576 or by email: internationals@edmentum.com.