1. Iowa Assessment Program
Good Evening, this is to inform you about the national assessment program that your child takes in grades 2-7.

2. WHAT IS A STANDARDIZED TEST?
It is not a mastery test. It is designed to find out how much a student knows and compares your child’s performance to his/her peers in the same grade across the county.

3. One Piece of Evidence of Learning
Information obtained from the Iowa Test and the Cognitive Abilities Test should be used with other information about your child.

4. An Integrated Assessment
Standardized
Achievement
Iowa
Student
Self
Assessment
Performance
Assessments –
Writing Assessments
An Integrated Assessment
Program
Teacher Made
Tests
You may want to change this to reflect what you do in your school
Local
Assessments
Ability
Assessment
CogAT

5. Appropriate Purposes for Standardized Testing
Identify strengths and weaknesses of individual students
Identify strengths and weaknesses of groups of students
Monitor year to year developmental changes
Provide feedback to students and parents
You may have some other purposes in your school that you want to add

6. What is a Norm?
Compares student performance to a representative sample of the population in the same grade and at the same time of the year
An indicator of strengths and weaknesses in specific achievement areas.
The norms are comparing students to a representative sample of 200,000 students across the country

7. How Tall is Waldo?
Explain National Percentiles – Let me illustrate a norm . Waldo is taller than 90 % of all the people in this group – only 10% of his friends are taller than he is. He is at the 90th percentile in height

8. Test Taking Strategies Why are we testing?

9. How Heavy is Waldo?
In this slide, you can see that Waldo is lighter than most of his friends. He is heavier than only 20% of his friends – 80 % of his friends are heavy than he is. – Waldo is at the 20th percentile when comparing weight.

10. Relationship of Stanines and Percentile Ranks
Explain that if you have a child at the 50th NPR, that would mean that your child is average doing as well as 50% of his peers and 50% of his peers are doing better. Explain stanines- A stanine is a grouping of percentiles. 23% of the country are in the 7th ,8th, 9th, stanines and 23% of the county fall in the bottom 3 stanines. A student falling in the first or second stanine could be at a chance level- the student may have guessed on the test.

11. Is Waldo Taller or Heavier?
Attribute Percentile
Height 90
Weight 20
We could substitute reading for height or math for weight

12. What Do I Need to Know about The Iowa Assessment

13. The Iowa Assessment Standards Reflect the Latest National Standards in: English Language Arts Mathematics Social Studies Science
If you are using Common Core Standards you can use the term “Common Core” because when the new forms of the Iowa Assessments were built, the Common Core standards were incorporated in the construction of the assessment.

14. Important Information for Students to know
To be average a student needs to only correctly answer approximately 50% of the items. The other items are designed to see how far beyond his/her grade level a child might achieve.
Items do not go from easy to hard – Item difficulty is mixed.

15. ELA ( English Language Arts)
Reports to Parents
You receive information about your child’s performance in several areas:
ELA ( English Language Arts)
Mathematics
Social Studies
Science
You may want to add a sample of a parent report that you give to parents after this slide

16. Sample Reports
You may use this slide if your home reports looks like this. Or you can make a generic copy of the report you send home so parents can look at a similar report while you are presenting.

17. English Language Arts (ELA)
Reading
Written Expression
Conventions of Writing
Vocabulary
ELA total score consists of 4 subtests. At grades K-2 you may also have an extended ELA total if you gave the Word Analysis and Listening tests.

18. Students read several informational and
Reading
Students read several informational and
literature based selections silently and
answer questions.
A suggestion for parents: Read a story to you child and leave our a word and ask him to fill in the space with a word that makes sense, talk about what might happen later in the story, develop a love for stories. Asking a child who is struggling with reading to read orally every night does not really help your child but rather listening to an interesting story and anticipating what will come next will help your child to develop a love for reading.

19. A pure measure of word knowledge
Vocabulary
A pure measure of word knowledge
Test of word knowledge
Not a reading test – as no context is provided to give meaning
Best predictor of achievement
25 To operate the machine
A oil
B run
C build
D repair
Vocabulary is a key component of academic success. Introduce you child to new words every day.

20. Written Expression
Assesses the Editing and Proof-reading Strategies of the Writing Process
Select a better ending sentence
Revise a sentence

21. Sample – Written Expressions
The student must read a short report and select an addition to the report that would help to improve the report.

22. Conventions of Writing
Students must proof-read and select the correct convention of writing for a given sentence.
Punctuation
Spelling
Capitalization

23. Students will be asked to identify mistakes in various passages.
Sample - Punctuation
Assessing the use of commas. Students need to indicate the line that contains an error
Students will be asked to identify mistakes in various passages.

24. Math Assess student’s knowledge of: Geometry Measurement
Fractions/ decimals
Data interpretation
Algebraic expressions
Problem Solving
Work with your child to assure that he can quickly recall answers to simple multiplication, addition and subtraction facts.

25. Sample - Math
Use of Algebraic Expressions - from a grade 5 test

26. Math
Computation
Pure assessment of the ability to add, multiply, subtract and divide using whole and rational numbers
Items are intentionally not embedded in word problems
Speed and accuracy in computing
Students need to know their addition and subtraction facts by the end of grade 2. Multiplication and division facts by middle of grade 3

27. Social Studies Use of Primary Source Material Addresses concepts in:
Economics
History
Geography
Multicultural Society
Government

28. Science Process and Content
Increase emphasis on analysis of experiments, lab methodology, theories, and concepts
Balance of items across science content areas: Life, Physical, Earth, Health, Environment

29. Cognitive Abilities Test ™
CogAT ® is key to understanding
how your students learn!
CogAT measures the development of reasoning abilities that are critical for success in school. Results profile students’ verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal abilities—allowing teachers to plan instructional interventions. Use CogAT to better understand your students and help them learn more effectively.

30. Powerful Tool Alone or With the Iowa Tests
CogAT…
Provides extensive information on how to use students’ scores in ways that help students learn
CogAT with The Iowa Tests...
Provides predictive achievement scores

31. CogAT Measures Important Reasoning Skills:
Making inferences
Detecting similarities and differences
Comprehending problem situations
Forming concepts
Classifying and categorizing objects, events, and other stimuli
Creating and adapting problem-solving strategies
Using past experience and instruction in novel problem contexts

32. Abilities: Verbal Ability – Best predictor of academic success
Quantitative Ability – “number sense” ability to see relationship of numbers
Nonverbal Ability – Best predictor of how fast a student learns

33. Cognitive Profiles A Profile= All Abilities roughly at sAme level
B Profile = One of the Abilities is aBove or Below the other B(N-) or B(V+)
On the parent narrative report, parents are referred to the CogAT web site for more information on their child’s ability profile

34. Cognitive Profiles
C Profile = Contrast A student shows a relative strength and a relative weakness. C(V+ Q-)
E Profile = Extreme difference between abilities

35. Explanation for Parents and Teachers
Click on interactive report and enter student profile

36. This is a sample of the web page that parents can go to
This is a sample of the web page that parents can go to. Parents put in their child’s profile and then they can receive a report on characteristics of similar students with that profile and instructional strategies.

37. Verbal
Parents are usually very interested in seeing what a CogAT test might look like – analogies of words

38. Quantitative
Numbers in series – find the pattern and determine what number comes next

39. Non-Verbal
Classification of shapes – Which shape has similar characteristics to the first three

40. Non-Verbal
Analogies of shapes – The first shape is to the second shape as the third shape is to ??

41. Non-Verbal
Paper folding – Fold the paper over in the direction of the arrows, punch the holes and predict what the paper would look like when it is unfolded. Students must visualize this.. They do not actually fold a piece of paper or punch holes.

43. Nonverbal Subtests