Likelihood to Recommend I think it is well suited for K-12 schools, especially for tracking student growth over time. The ability to easily upload state assessment results and produce pre-built reports provides teachers actionable data. The online assessment system is more appropriate for secondary (grades 6-12) students in our district due to the types of assessments our elementary (K-5) students complete. I have some experience with other systems and think that the illuminate software offers more flexibility in the types of data that can be stored.
Read full review NWEA MAP is a great assessment for 1st grade and up. It directly aligns with the college and career standards. It can predict achievement on the ACT and state assessments. NWEA MAP used with kindergarten is not as aligned. It is very difficult for new kindergarteners to take. Most students guess because the assessment gets very long for them. It is a great assessment for the middle of the year for high achievers and at the end of the year for all students who are entering 1st grade.
Read full review Pros Easy to use Item banks Outstanding customer service. Reasonable pricing models. Integrates well with student info systems. Read full review NWEA MAP Suite calculates projected growth for individual students based on their grade level and RIT score for each subject. Projected growth can be found on many different reports. Read full review Cons Tech support seemed good but our main issue was never resolved. We received attention and someone was working on our issue, but they could never figure out why our student count was off for 1 grade level even though they said our data looked great. The customized reports were powerful, but there was so much to learn for the average administrative user, like a principal, to get the detailed data they need. You would have to have a dedicated person to create customized reports. At some point, our representative just stopped calling and there was no further contact. Then our rep left the company and the new rep only sent one email notifying us of the change. That was almost a year ago. Read full review NWEA MAP has technical issues during prime testing times (fall, winter, and spring). It is as if the system gets overloaded and cannot handle all of the students logged on at once. I would like to be able to see the reports immediately. Currently, you have to wait until the next day for the scores to be available. Read full review Usability Illuminate DnA is a very usable system. A few items to learn and set up can be a bit time-consuming. However, once set up it is easy to use and powerful for a school that staff can master quickly. It has more features then we actually use but I hope we will over time.
Read full review Support Rating Our issue was never resolved so that we could use the software to produce accurate reports. Their tech department looked into the issue several times and could never figure out why our student was off and then they just closed the case. They confirmed we were performing the correct steps to load the data and they confirmed our data looked accurate. Great, but again why was our student count off?
Read full review The customer service is phenomenal! Every time I call, which is not very often, I always get a friendly agent that works hard to solve my problem and does not give up. They look at all angles of the issue and will go above and beyond to help. For example, our students are rostered by connecting NWEA MAP Suite to our SIS, and sometimes there is a glitch. NWEA will call the other software company if necessary, to help get the glitch fixed.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Illuminate DnA offers more flexibility and additional features that our previous Data Director system offered. We were looking for a system that offered an online assessment portal and the ability to create elementary standard-based report cards when we selected the illuminate DnA software. We were impressed with the ability to easily create custom reports and liked the comprehensive student profile page.
Read full review NWEA MAP Suite is more directly aligned to our college and career readiness state standards and ACT. The questions are more rigorous than
Renaissance Star Assessments . The reports on the NWEA MAP Suite are more detailed and exact in where the data came from.
Read full review Return on Investment Better handle on student achievement. Clarity around achievements on specific standards. Read full review Allowed us to test students 3x a year to better evaluate if a student is growing or not. The data from the MAP assessment may be included as part of the placement review process along with other data points, such as student work samples and other assessment data to help determine if a student is ready for the next grade level. Read full review ScreenShots