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District 131 staff outline impact of Illinois and NWEA renorming on scores
Summary
District presenters told the curriculum committee that recent renorming by the Illinois State Board of Education and NWEA MAP changes how proficiency and percentiles are reported; preliminary state numbers showed higher ELA and math proficiency and mixed science results, and staff urged caution in comparing percentile ranks across years.
District 131 staff told the curriculum committee on Oct. 25 that recent renorming of state and benchmark assessments will change how student results are labeled and compared across years.
The district said the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), the Illinois science assessment and the ACT for grade 11 have new cut scores set by the Illinois State Board of Education, and the NWEA MAP benchmark was renormed this year, shifting percentile ranks even where raw scores did not change.
District staff said the state’s preliminary IAR results indicate 53% of students are proficient in English/language arts (up 12 percentage points from the prior year), 38% are proficient in math (up 10 points), and 45% are proficient in science (a slight decline). The presenter cautioned that these figures are preliminary state data.
The presenter, identified in the meeting transcript as a staff member, explained that Illinois redesigned performance levels to create unified categories — "above proficient, proficient, approaching proficient, and below proficient" — and that some students previously labeled "approaching proficient" may now be labeled "proficient" under new cut scores. The staff member said the change particularly affects students who were near previous cut scores and can alter how proficiency rates appear without changes in instruction or learning.
On NWEA MAP, staff described a renorming that moved the distribution (the presenter used a bell-curve analogy) so that identical RIT (raw) scores can map to different percentile ranks than before. "The RIT scores or the raw scores in MAP for students didn't change, but the percentile rank for students did change," the presenter said. The presenter advised comparing RIT-to-RIT scores across years rather than percentile ranks because the percentile benchmarks have changed.
District staff emphasized the practical steps the district will take: monitor impacts on placement and program decisions, update goals using RIT scores where appropriate, and review individual student data so that instructional groups and interventions remain targeted. The presenter said the renorming tends to affect lower-achieving students more substantially but also has smaller effects across the distribution.
Committee members responded with general approval and noted the renorming came after pandemic-era shifts in student performance. No formal action was taken; the update was informational.
The presentation included examples the presenter said showed students with strong GPAs and multiple AP/dual-credit courses who previously were labeled nonproficient on older SAT/assessment scales, underscoring the district’s rationale for careful interpretation of new categories.
