ERB Standardized Tests

Presentation Overview

– Context– Purpose of testing– Definition of terms– School wide considerations– Interpreting individual students’ results

What does the acronym “ERB” mean?

ERB stands for the Educational Records Bureau.

ERB is a non-profit educational service organization that provides standardized testing and interpretation of results to national and suburban public schools and independent schools, such as SCD.

“ERB’s” are standardized tests.

What is a standardized test?

A standardized test uses uniform procedures for administration and scoring in order to assure that the results from different people are comparable.

Examples of standardized tests: SAT, ACT, GRE, and Iowa Test of Basic Skills (the ITBS).

Reliability estimates the degree to which an instrument measures the same way each time it is used under the same conditions with the same subjects.

Validity involves the degree to which the test measures what it is supposed to measure.

Why use standardized tests?

Usually created by commercial test publishers, standardized tests are designed to give a common measure of students' performance.

Because large numbers of students throughout the country take the same test, they give educators a common yardstick or “standard” of measure.

Educators use these standardized tests to tell how well school programs are succeeding or to give themselves a picture of the skills and abilities of individual students.

What is assessed with ERBs?

The ERB’s contain a reasoning test and an achievement test in both language arts and mathematics. The tests are in a multiple choice format.

At The Summit, the tests are administered over a period of four days in spring.

What is NOT measured?

The ERB does not measure traits or qualities, such as effort, tenacity, emotional intelligence, creativity, civic participation and service.

As educators dedicated to working with the whole child, we believe these qualities are as important to success as academic achievement.

What is a Norm Referenced Test?

With norm-referenced tests, a representative group of students is given the test prior to its availability to the public. The scores of the students who take the test after publication are then compared to those of the norm group.

The ERB tests compare scores of students from:1. National schools2. Suburban schools3. Independent schools

What information does the test give us?

It tells you how your school performs in comparison to other schools like it. Independent, Suburban, and National Norms are provided.

In addition, the test also helps us detect untapped potential in students or identify a student who may need help in a particular area.

Individual Profiles

Give us a “snapshot” view Chart progress over time Help pinpoint specific areas of strength and

difficulty May indicate need for further investigation

What does it mean to get a “snapshot” view?

An individual test is often described as providing a “snapshot” of a student’s skills, abilities, and knowledge because many variables can affect a student’s performance on a test: unfamiliarity with test format, test anxiety, fatigue, etc.

Test results must be considered in conjunction with the myriad of performance assessments used over the course of the school year.

Caveats about all test results...

A “true” score is obtained by multiple measures administered over time, but most tests represent a one-time event

Results from a single testing event must be put in the context of teacher judgment and other assessments

Taken in isolation a score or set of scores may be affected by:

– the nature of the task– the disposition of the student – the time or place of testing

Remember:

Standardized tests are only one of the tools in the educational assessment tool kit.

Used in conjunction with subject matter tests, homework, class participation and daily teacher observations, ERBs contribute to the overall portrait of the student’s learning.

What are the test categories?

The following skills and abilities are tested, with some variance from grade to grade:

– Verbal Reasoning– Vocabulary– Reading Comprehension– Writing Mechanics – Writing Concepts and Skills – Quantitative Reasoning– Mathematics– Algebra (gr. 8)– Auditory Comprehension (gr. 2,3)– Word Analysis (gr. 2)

What is verbal reasoning?

Verbal Reasoning is the ability to analyze information and draw logical inferences.

Measures the students’ ability to conceptualize relationships among words and concepts and to draw conclusions based on incomplete information.

What is verbal reasoning?

Sample Question (grade 6):Which lettered pair of words goes together in the same way as the first pair of words?

SCULPTURE : STONE ::(A) leaves : rake(B) truck : cement(C) shoes : leather(D) garden : hose

What is reading comprehension?

Reading comprehension refers to comprehension of written material, including recall of information, identification of main ideas, and using information from passages read.

Measures students’ ability to understand and interpret written text, both fiction and non-fiction.

Skills are tested: vocabulary in context, explicit information, inference, and analysis

What is tested in math?

This section is broken down into six content areas: 1. number sense and operations with fractions and decimals 2. number sense and operations with whole numbers3. geometry and spatial sense4. measurement5. data analysis, statistics, probability6. patterns, functions and pre-algebra and algebra

Students are assessed in three process areas: conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge and problem solving.

Understanding Test Terms

Raw Scores Scaled Scores Percentiles Stanines Item Analysis Sub Tests

What does percentile mean?

This term refers to the percentage of students in the norm population whose scores fall at or below a given score.

A percentile ranking of 79% using the independent school norms means that the student scored higher than 79% of the students at the same grade level at independent schools using the test.

The percentile ranking is not the same as percent correct, which indicates the proportion of questions a students answered correctly.

What is a stanine?

Stanine is created from the words “standard nines” and divides a normal distribution of scores (a bell curve) into nine parts.

Stanines are units on an equal interval scale, which means that the same difference in achievement exists between any two successive stanines.

What is the relationship between stanines and percentiles?

9th stanine 96-99 percentile 8th stanine 89-95 7th stanine 77-88 6th stanine 60-76 5th stanine 40-59 4th stanine 23-39 1st-3rd stanine 1-22

What are raw scores?

Raw scores are the number of questions the student has answered correctly on the test or sub-test.– John answered 36 of the 45 questions correctly,

so his raw score is 36. Raw scores allow you to see the students’

actual performance.

What are scaled scores?

For each test, the raw score has been converted to a standardized scale in order to make it possible to compare your students’ results with the results of students in the norm sample.

How are scaled scores helpful?

Scaled scores allow us to compare test results across more than one year.

We can use scaled scores to compare results from different forms of the same subtest.– ex: How does 4th gr. Reading Comp. score

compare to 3rd gr. Reading Comp. score?

Considerations and Cautions!

Group scores are the most stable and reliable scores for analysis

Scores for groups of less than 30 are easily skewed by 1 or 2 scores

Individual scores can fluctuate from session to session because of many factors

The teacher’s evaluation of a student’s regular classroom performance throughout the year is likely more valid than a single test score.

Conclusion

Thank you for your time and attention.

Questions or Comments?