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WHY ARE STUDENTS TESTED?

Parents often ask, "Why were my children tested?"  It's important to understand that standardized testing programs usually serve several purposes. They help teachers, principals, and superintendents:

w evaluate and improve the individual school
w identify a child's academic strengths
w identify areas where a child may need to improve

A testing program is only one of several tools schools use to evaluate students' performance. Children are never measured on the basis of tests alone.  

Test scores are also used to compare similar schools to one another.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SCORES?

Parents can compare our school's test scores to the scores of other schools or groups of students. Three popular ways of making comparisons are by using percentiles, stanines, or grade-level equivalents.  

Test publishers use one of these three methods to report test scores so that teachers and parents can compare an individual student's/school's scores with the scores of other students/schools who took the same test.

The charts above show our school's scores for the past few years.  The first column shows the percentile, followed by the stanine, separated by a slash. (Columns are headed NP/SN)  The second column shows the grade level-equivalents. (Column is headed G.E.)

WHAT ARE STANINE SCORES?

Stanine is short for "standard nine." The name comes from the fact that stanine scores range from a  low of 1 to a high of 9.**  For instance, a stanine score of

1, 2, or 3 is below average
4, 5, or 6 is average
7, 8, or 9 is above average

A below average stanine score in a particular area reveals an area in which the students need improvement.  An average stanine score indicates that the school's students are performing at about the same level as other students who took the test. A stanine score that is above average means that students are performing better in that area than other students who took the test.

WHAT ARE PERCENTILE SCORES?

In contrast to stanines, percentiles give a more detailed description of how students compare with other students who took the test by showing scores that range from 1 to 99.

For example, if a class scored in the 66th percentile on a test, that class achieved a score that is higher than 66% of the other classes who took the test. So, if 1,000 classes took the test, the class in the 66th percentile scored higher than 660 classes.

Do not confuse percentile scores with percentage correct scores. Percentile scores allow comparison of one school's students' scores with the total group of students who took the test. Percentage correct scores simply reveal the number of items that a student answered correctly out of the total number of items.


WHAT ARE GRADE-LEVEL EQUIVALENT SCORES?

Grade-level equivalent scores are determined by giving a test that is developed for a particular grade to students in other grades. For instance, test designers establish grade-equivalents for a 4th grade test by giving that same test to students who are in the 6th and the 2nd grades.

Grade-level equivalent scores are often misunderstood; be careful when interpreting them. If a 4th grader received a 7th grade equivalent score on a 4th grade reading achievement test, you should not believe the child is ready for 7th grade material. Actually, the score means that the child reads 4th grade material as well as the average 7th grader.



WHO ARE THE OTHER STUDENTS 
WHO TOOK THE TEST?

Stanines, percentiles, and grade-level equivalent scores all rely on measuring your school's scores against the scores of a large group of students who also took the same test.   For St. Timothy's, this other group of students, or the comparison group, is composed of other students from a nationally representative sample who took the test earlier.

A school's test results are most meaningful when discussed in relation to these other schools' scores. 

When comparing one school with others who took the same test, the discussion should be focused on the ways in which the students in one school are similar or dissimilar to other students in the group.



Additional Details 

* Explanations of test scores were adapted from the article "Explaining Test Results to Parents" -- original text of this article can be seen at http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=1&n=1

** stanines are Expressed as a nine-point normalized standard score scale with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 2.  Only the integers 1 to 9 occur. The percentage of scores at each stanine is 4,7,12,17,20,17,12,7, and 4 respectively.  Ordinarily, differences of of two or more stanines between scores are considered to be both statistically significant and meaningful.  

Test scores are scaled to stanine scores using the following algorithm:

1. Rank results from lowest to highest
2. Give the lowest 4% a stanine of 1, the next 7% a stanine of 2, etc., according to the following table:

Calculating Stanines

Result Ranking	4%	7%	12%	17%	20%	17%	12%	7%	4%
Stanine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

The underlying basis for obtaining stanines is that a normal distribution is divided into nine intervals, each of which has a width of one half of a standard deviation excluding the first and last. The mean lies approximately in the center of the fifth interval.

Stanines can be used to convert any test score into a single digit number. This was valuable when paper punch cards were the standard method of storing this kind of information. However, because all stanines are integers, two scores in a single stanine are sometimes further apart than two scores in adjacent stanines. This reduces their value.

St. Timothy's Curriculum

Core Subjects:  Math, Language Arts, Reading and Science

Additional Subjects:  as Science, Social Studies, Spelling, Handwriting and Religion are taught daily at the appropriate grade level. 

Weekly instruction in:  Physical Education, Music, Art, Computer and Library for all students in Junior Kindergarten and above.

 

Outstanding Programs for Every Grade

Click on Grade for Details