{"id":5632,"date":"2025-10-15T22:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T22:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/5632\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T22:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T22:28:14","slug":"richardson-isd-outpaces-national-averages-academic-growth-results-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/5632\/","title":{"rendered":"Richardson ISD outpaces national averages, academic growth results show"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tRichardson ISD students from kindergarten through eighth grade performed above national norms in the beginning-of-the-year Measure of Academic Progress<\/a>, or MAP exams.<\/p>\n

The results, presented<\/a> at an Oct. 9<\/a> board of trustees meeting, show that all of these grade levels surpassed national averages in the MAP Reading English assessment.<\/p>\n

According to RISD Superintendent Tabitha Branum, this is the first time in a few years that the district has had every single grade level above national norms in one of these exams.<\/p>\n

\"chart<\/p>\n

The big picture<\/p>\n

The data collected by the exams\u2014which were administered in September\u2014shows growth compared to the beginning of the 2024 school year in all assessed areas, including Reading English, Reading Spanish and Mathematics.<\/p>\n

In addition, most grade levels performed above national norms on the Reading Spanish and Mathematics exams, with only fifth and eighth grades falling a few points below, respectively.<\/p>\n

These referential \u201cnorms\u201d are provided to the district by the Northwest Evaluation Association<\/a>, which recently adjusted its normative data<\/a> for the first time since 2020 to reflect changes in national student demographics and post-pandemic shifts in student performance.<\/p>\n

The discussion<\/p>\n

Gina Ortiz, executive director of the district\u2019s accountability team, attributed the assessment\u2019s success to RISD\u2019s instructional priorities, which include:<\/p>\n

Data-driven instructionObservation and feedbackLesson internalizationProfessional learning communitiesOrtiz also linked the results to new priorities set for the 2025-26 Campus Improvement Plans<\/a>, which require campus committees to focus on individual student growth to align with RISD\u2019s Strategic Plan 2023-2028<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Branum highlighted several factors contributing to the district\u2019s strong start to the year, including new support plans shared with parents to foster summer learning, over 6,000 students participating in summer school programs and a clearly defined curriculum for the first few weeks of school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the differences that I felt this year is because we had clarity on our instructional priorities,\u201d Branum said. \u201cReally, our campuses could focus [from] day one [on] just high-quality instruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some context<\/p>\n

MAP Growth is an assessment tool created by NWEA<\/a> to measure academic progress. The test is administered three times a year and produces an individualized scale<\/a> that tracks each student\u2019s progress throughout the school year and across K-12 grades.<\/p>\n

According to Branum, MAP results are not a predictor for the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness<\/a>, but there are some correlations.<\/p>\n

Along with its 2025 adjustment of normative data, NWEA also released a new enhanced algorithm<\/a> that aligns MAP items to each state\u2019s standards, making each student\u2019s data more relevant to the State of Texas and STAAR examinations.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richardson ISD students from kindergarten through eighth grade performed above national norms in the beginning-of-the-year Measure of Academic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[5812,5811,160,162,161,5810,5809,5157],"class_list":["post-5632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-assessment","tag-map-testing","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news","tag-richardson-isd","tag-risd","tag-staar-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}