NWEA MAP Assessments

We want to know where we are going, drive in the right direction and successfully reach their destination. It's all about student learning at their place on the map of instruction. Each destination deserves the same amount of attention but may need different routes. Teachers can see where they are conceptually and move them along at a pace designed to meet their personal educational goals.

Empowering students by providing them with equal opportunities to learn and grow is important to us—and we know it’s important to you, too. That’s why Northwest Evaluation AssociationTM (NWEATM) is committed to creating assessments that meet the unique learning needs of all students, including those with disabilities. Ensuring that our assessments are accessible, easy to use, and reliable is part of an ongoing initiative to remove barriers and improve accommodations for students with disabilities.

Norm-referenced tests (or NRTs) compare an examinee’s performance to that of other examinees. Standardized examinations such as the SAT are norm-referenced tests. The goal is to rank the set of examinees so that decisions about their opportunity for success (e.g. college entrance) can be made.

Criterion-referenced tests (or CRTs) differ in that each examinee’s performance is compared to a pre-defined set of criteria or a standard. The goal with these tests is to determine whether or not the candidate has the demonstrated mastery of a certain skill or set of skills. These results are usually “pass” or “fail” .