Imagine MyPath offers several assessment and placement options to ensure students receive personalized instruction that is tailored to their individual needs in Reading and Math. Accurate placement is essential for delivering the appropriate level of challenge and support within each student's learning path.
MyPath uses assessment results to determine each student's assessed grade level, which reflects their current knowledge and capabilities within specific content areas. This assessed grade level informs the assignment of a student's overall placement grade, which is the instructional grade level designated for their learning within MyPath. Together, a student's placement grade and rostered grade shape the content of their learning path, ensuring that it aligns with their needs and abilities.
This article provides an overview of the different assessment and placement options available in Imagine MyPath Reading and Math.
Note
For Imagine Science Corner and Imagine Purpose, students are automatically assigned placement grades equal to their rostered grade levels.
Overview of assessment options
Organizations using Imagine MyPath have 3 assessment options:
- MyPath Assessment (MPA)
- NWEA™ MAP® Growth Assessment
- Renaissance Star Assessment
The MPA is MyPath's built-in benchmark assessment and can be turned on or off at the district, school, and/or student levels. The third-party assessments, NWEA MAP Growth and Renaissance Star, require a rostering integration, which allows the sharing of students' assessment scores with MyPath.
Most organizations administer the selected assessment 3 times a year, enabling educators to track growth throughout the academic session. District Administrators should discuss these assessment options with their Customer Success Manager (CSM) early in their implementation.
MyPath Assessment (MPA)
The MyPath Assessment is a highly adaptive tool that evaluates student proficiency in key content areas.
- Adaptive testing: Students receive different questions based on their performance, ensuring a tailored assessment experience.
- Spanish availability: The MyPath Math assessment is fully available in Spanish for Grades K-5.
- Implementation: Must be turned on for your district/school by an IL employee. Confer with your CSM to manage your assessment settings, or contact Product Support.
- Administration: After the assessment has been turned on at the district/school level, students log in to MyPath and select the desired subject to take the assessment.
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Testing windows: The dates of the 3 default assessment windows are provided below. Administrators can adjust the windows based on the start and end dates of your school year.
- Assessment 1: July 1 to October 31
- Assessment 2: November 1 to March 31
- Assessment 3: April 1 to June 30
Note
A fourth assessment window can be added if desired; however, we recommend waiting at least 45 days between assessments to allow sufficient time for students to demonstrate growth.
- Reporting: Scores are available in the MyPath Assessment report. Overall and domain-specific scores are reported as scaled scores and corresponding assessed grade levels.
NWEA™ MAP® Growth Assessment
The NWEA MAP Growth Assessment is a computer-adaptive, third-party assessment that measures what students know, how they are growing academically, and what they are ready to learn next.
- Adaptive testing: Students receive different questions based on their performance, ensuring a tailored assessment experience.
- Implementation: Requires a rostering integration. Confer with your IL Account Executive to initiate the setup.
- Integration: Scores sync automatically with Imagine MyPath via the NWEA ID number in each student's profile.
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Testing windows: The NWEA MAP Growth has 4 default testing windows:
- Fall: August 15 to November 30
- Winter: December 1 to February 28 (February 29 in leap years)
- Spring: March 1 to June 15
- Summer: June 16 to August 14
- Reporting: Students' MAP scores (Overall RIT scores and Lexiles for Reading/Quantiles for Math) are available for educators to view by logging in to the NWEA portal or by accessing the Benchmark Growth report within Imagine MyPath after students have taken at least 2 assessments.
Renaissance Star Assessment
The Renaissance Star Assessment is a fixed-form assessment that measures student mastery of grade-level content. This
- Fixed-form testing: All students in the same grade level respond to the same set of test items.
- Implementation: Requires a rostering integration. Confer with your IL Account Executive to initiate the setup.
- Integration: Scores sync automatically with Imagine MyPath via the Renaissance ID number in each student's profile.
- Reporting: Students' Star scores are available for educators to view by logging in to the Renaissance portal or by accessing the Benchmark Growth report within Imagine MyPath after students have taken at least 2 assessments.
- Testing windows: Testing occurs up to 3 times a year, with schedules determined by your organization.
The table below summarizes the 3 main assessment options for MyPath:
| Feature | MyPath Assessment | NWEA MAP Growth Assessment | Renaissance Star Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Built-in, adaptive | Third-party, adaptive | Third-party, fixed-form |
| Integration | No integration required | Requires NWEA integration | Requires Renaissance integration |
| Testing Windows | 3 default windows (adjustable) | 4 default windows (defined by NWEA), although most schools only test up to 3 times per year | Up to 3 times per year (determined by organization) |
| Scoring | Scaled scores and assessed grade levels | Overall RIT scores and Lexiles/Quartiles | Scaled scores |
| Placement | Domain-level placement | Domain-level placement | Overall grade-level placement |
| Recommended for | Organizations without NWEA or Renaissance partnerships | Organizations already using NWEA | Organizations already using Renaissance |
Note
If your organization plans to use different assessments with different grade levels or different schools, consult with your CSM to determine whether the MyPath Assessment should be left on or turned off for each school. If you request to have the MyPath Assessment turned on within an organization, then all students will be prompted to take the MyPath Assessment even if they are also taking the NWEA MAP Growth or Renaissance Star assessment. If you request to have the MyPath Assessment turned off, teachers must manually place the non-NWEA/non-Star students into their learning paths one at a time.
Overview of placement options
MyPath offers several methods for placing students in appropriate learning paths:
Automatic placement based on assessments
Once assessments are completed, MyPath determines student placements based on their scores. Students may be placed at grade level, below grade level, or up to 2 grades above their rostered grade.
- MyPath Assessment: Provides domain-level placement based on students' domain scores, tailoring learning paths to students' needs in specific content areas.
- NWEA MAP Growth: Offers domain-specific placement similar to MPA, allowing for detailed, skill-level learning path customizations. (Requires integration)
- Renaissance Star: Provides an overall grade-level placement without domain-specific placement data. (Requires integration)
Manual placement options
Teachers and Administrators can manually adjust student placements when:
- Assessment results do not accurately reflect a student's abilities. This might be the case if a student experiences test anxiety or if the assessment does not fully capture their skills.
- Immediate placement is needed without recent assessment data. If a new student joins the school without recent assessment data, manual placement may be necessary.
- You want to use alternative assessment data. You might want to consider a student's performance on in-class assignments, projects, or other informal assessments to inform their placement decision.
Manual placement methods include:
- Direct manual placement: You can manually assign placements on the Student Placement page.
- Placement using scaled scores: For NWEA MAP Growth or Renaissance Star, scaled scores can be used to determine placement, although this approach does not incorporate domain-specific data into the generation of a student's learning path.
- Placement using external assessment data: For districts using assessments not integrated with MyPath, the district can determine grade level placement based on external assessment results. If the external assessment provides a grade level equivalent score, we recommend using this for the MyPath placement.
- Bulk placement: For larger organizations without an assessment integration, Administrators can bulk-assign placements to students from the Student Placement page
When you determine that a student should begin with lower-grade content or is ready for higher-level content, you have the flexibility to modify placements regardless of how they were originally set.