As mentioned [1] this past summer, HQ is in the process of retiring Original and Core Assessments 1 – 7. We wanted to give everyone an update on the transition.
Currently, the entire system has access to Mathnasium 1 – 7 and Computation Assessments, plus their accompanying materials. At this point, franchisees should be using Mathnasium Assessments for all new enrollments at these levels, as well as transitioning all existing students to Learning Plans based on the new Assessments. New Assessments for Levels 8 and above are currently under development—Core Assessments for these levels will remain available until the updated Assessments are ready for release.
In response to franchisee requests, we have decided to delay the retirement of Original and Core Assessments for Levels 1-7 until December 31, 2015. This is a firm date—it will not be extended, and there will be no exceptions made! Start planning now to close out all Learning Plans based on these older Assessments prior to the end of the year. While these Learning Plans will remain functional, you will lose the ability to administer Post-Assessments based on their content.
The Prescriptives currently mapped to these older Assessments will be evaluated piece by piece to determine if they should be retired as well, or maintained in a new format. Keep watching Mathnasium Matters for further curriculum development updates.
If you have any questions on transitioning your students to new materials, or about the Assessment transition process in general, please reach out to support@mathnasium.com [2].
3 Comments To "Update – U.S. Franchisees: Retirement of Original and Core Assessments 1-7 and Computation"
#1 Comment By Jodi Ralston On September 25, 2015 @ 8:22 am
Does this “retirement” of assessments apply to the shorter computation assessments as well? We do not want to give the entire computation assessment combined with one level at our centers and prefer the older, broken up computation assessments.
The Mathnasium assessments are too long – adding in the entire computation assessment makes them even longer — leading to over-sized learning plans that easily become outdated before being completed. To mitigate this issue within our centers, we presently use shorter interim assessments to update each student’s learning plan periodically, as well as to communicate progress against plan regularly to the student and parents. Ideally, none of our students should go more than a couple of months without a learning plan update. Although far from the ideal, interim assessments are now commonplace for our students in Levels 5 and up.
To help our students feel and be successful, we would prefer shorter, more focused assessments leading to shorter, more attainable learning plans. Unfortunately, due to the length of most learning plans resulting from the broad scope of Mathnasium’s current assessments, our students may still take up to three or four interim assessments within one Mathnasium Level. As it can take students over a year to complete a current Mathnasium Level, this often leads to them feeling like they’re going nowhere, making little to no progress while climbing a steep mountain of math. Our concern is that a Mathnasium assessment combined with the entire computation assessment has even a greater scope that will require bigger steps to climb a seemingly steeper mountain.
Our students are constantly changing, learning and growing — with and without us. Beyond learning math concepts directly from our prescriptive materials, students also gain new understanding from our Workout Books, the school classroom, their family and friends as well as broader life experiences. Their needs change continually, sometimes dramatically, over short periods of time. Often, mapping out specific details in a student’s learning plan — beyond more than a couple of months into the future — is futile because the learning plan becomes outdated before it is ever completed.
With all of this said, we are very excited about the new prescriptive materials and their potential to help our students understand math even better. If we can get the assessment process right, we will have an amazing and powerful systematized program that really can help so many more students by helping so many more centers deliver the Mathnasium Method consistently from the start.
Jodi Ralston
#2 Comment By Mathnasium Education Department On September 30, 2015 @ 10:01 am
Hi Jodi,
Thanks for your comment. The only computation Assessment that will remain is the Mathnasium Computation Assessment. The broken up Computation that was released with the Core Assessments was not successfully implemented across the system and created a great deal of confusion in the Assessment process. We have determined that a two-part Assessment process is the best implementation. While we continue to recommend giving the entire Assessment (Level and NF or Comp Add-on) to get the complete picture of a student at a given level, local and individual differences can be accomodated through the use of the exclude function in M2.
Jennifer Nicholls
#3 Pingback By » Curriculum Retirement – U.S. Franchisees: Materials Associated with Core and Original Assessments Mathnasium Matters: On October 3, 2017 @ 1:11 pm
[…] that we have retired the Original and Core Assessments 1 – 7 and the Computation Assessments, it is time to retire much of the curriculum associated with those Assessments. This process will […]