MAP Essay: Standards and Grading

by Allison. Posted in BOSTON EXAM SCHOOLS, BOSTON LATIN, MAP - 0 Comments

The MAP exam includes an argumentative essay, which is a piece of writing that requires the student to do the following: investigate a topic; collect, generate, and evaluate evidence; and establish a position on the topic in a concise manner. The MAP essay is graded on the following 3 categories. A top-scoring MAP essay would receive 10 points according to the following scores in each category:
  • Organization/purpose: 4 points
  • Evidence/elaboration: 4 points
  • Conventions: 2 points
Administrators of the MAP essay and exam have provided the following rubric to explain how each category is scored.
Evidence/Elaboration:
  • Comprehensive evidence from source materials (facts and details) is integrated, relevant, and specific.
  • Effective use of a variety of elaborative techniques.
  • Vocabulary is clearly appropriate for the audience and purpose.
  • Effective, appropriate style enhances content.
Organization/Purpose:
  • Claim is introduced, clearly communicated, and the focus is strongly maintained for the purpose and audience.
  • Consistent use of a variety of transitional strategies to clarify the relationships between and among ideas.
  • Effective introduction and conclusion.
  • Logical progression of ideas from beginning to end; strong connections between and among ideas with some syntactic variety.
  • Alternate and opposing argument(s) are clearly acknowledged or addressed.
Conventions:
  • Adequate use of correct sentence formation, punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, and spelling.

Many school districts in the Greater Boston area use MAP to evaluate student learning and inform academic instruction. The assessment also includes several built-in accommodations for students with disabilities and English learners. MAP Growth is a computer adaptive test, which means that it adapts the level of difficulty based on the responses provided by the student. The test will start at the child’s current grade level and adjust the difficulty based on their performance.

Students will have two opportunities to take the MAP Growth test to apply to the BPS exam schools – Spring and Fall. If the student takes the test twice, BPS will use the higher score for the application. The student must complete both sections of the test in order to receive a score.

Need help preparing for the MAP exam? Please click here to see what Boston Tutoring Services has to offer.

Allison Green
Boston Tutoring Services

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