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Midway ISD presents beginning‑of‑year assessment data showing gains in several elementary grades
Summary
District leaders reported beginning-of-year results from NWEA MAP, IXL and a math screener called "Tango Lion," highlighting large year-over-year growth in some early grades and districtwide trends used for teacher incentive allotment calculations.
Midway ISD staff presented beginning‑of‑year assessment results to the school board in October, saying the district’s early measures are largely in line with or ahead of last year’s starting points and that certain grades showed notable gains during the previous school year.
Dr. Ojima, director of innovation and learning, told the board the district uses multiple adaptive assessments: the NWEA MAP (RLA) for reading, a math screener referred to in the presentation as "Tango Lion," and IXL for personalized diagnostics and adaptive lessons. She said the district expects the different tools to produce different readouts and emphasized IXL’s ability to generate individualized practice.
The presentation highlighted these points from the 2024–25 growth data and the 2025 beginning‑of‑year (BOY) snapshot: - Kindergarten: Midway’s year‑over‑year growth was shown larger than the national norm (district cited a 16‑point gain versus a 14‑point national average in the slide commentary). - Second grade: Presentation cited a 17.4‑point gain over the year. - Fourth and fifth grades: Staff noted “huge gains” in some elementary grades and said those gains contributed to increases in Teacher Incentive Allotment outcomes in 2024–25. - Tenth grade: Staff said Midway’s tenth grade showed a 3.5 percentage‑point gain from BOY to end‑of‑year, which district leaders described as notable because tenth grade nationally is often flat.
Dr. Ojima summarized the district’s comparison to norms: “Compared to national norms we outpaced the state and the county by 10 to 12 points in overall approaches, by 15 to 17 points in overall meets, and by 14 to 15 points in the master’s level,” she told trustees.
Board members asked how BOY assessments are scheduled; staff said campuses test within a window that starts in August and that schedules are coordinated by campus testing coordinators. Staff said BOY parent reports had been communicated a couple of weeks earlier and can be distributed from the district platform if parents do not have direct access.
Trustees asked about middle‑school reading scores that were flat or slightly down in some snapshots. Staff acknowledged those grades can be harder to move at the national level and pointed to IXL and other personalized plans the district intends to use to target middle grades.
District leaders described how the assessment suite supports teacher planning and the district’s individualized learning goals: data from IXL creates adaptive lessons and teacher dashboards, Schoology (and Seesaw at lower grades) provides a parent portal and classroom-level artifacts, and Leader in Me portfolios give students a place to show goal-setting and progress.
No board action was taken; the presentation was informational. Staff said they will return with fall and mid‑year updates as more data arrive and as personalized lesson plans are assigned and tracked.
(Note: the presentation used multiple vendor names as recorded in the meeting; the district presented IXL, Schoology, Seesaw, Lightspeed and the NWEA MAP assessment as part of the report.)
