It’s good news when Highland Park ISD students improve their scores more than expected on a standardized achievement test. It’s great news when students beat their growth projections in each subject tested, and when that’s true for every grade of students who took the test.
HPISD test-takers achieved that landmark this winter with their scores on the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Growth assessment from the Northwest Evaluation Association.
HPISD students take the MAP test three times annually, in the fall, winter, and spring. The assessment is designed to measure students’ achievement and to help guide their instruction.
Kindergartners through seventh graders are tested on their reading and math skills. Second through seventh graders take an additional test on language usage, and third through seventh graders are assessed on science.
In addition to scores, parents receive a report that compares how much their student’s score increased to a “growth projection,” or the average score increase for test takers in the same grade with about the same starting score.
The school district receives similar grade-level data for each subject tested.
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This year, every grade of students outperformed its projected growth in every single subject. In some cases, scores increased by multiples of the projection.
Second graders, who were projected to increase their language usage scores by 5.5 points, went up by 12. Seventh graders were only projected to raise their MAP scores by 1 point in science. Instead, they went up 6.8 points. And fifth graders, whose math scores were projected to increase by 4.5 points, saw a 10.6-point jump.
The percentage of individual students who met their growth projections also increased in all but four of 25 groups of test takers when compared to the same data in 2025.
“This is the best I’ve ever seen,” HPISD board of trustees member Pete Flowers said when he saw the reading test results during a Feb. 10 work session.
“It’s shocking,” board president Maryjane Bonfield added. “What did we do?” she later asked deputy superintendent Shorr Heathcote.
“It’s all the things we’re doing, honestly,” Heathcote responded. She attributed the district’s progress to ensuring that its curriculum is uniformly rigorous and that teachers understand what it takes for every individual child to make progress.
“We’re still working through that. Are we there yet? Absolutely not,” she said, explaining that the MAP test is not directly aligned with the STAAR, Texas’ annual achievement exam. “We’re moving in the right direction.”
