St Rita Catholic School

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St Rita Catholic School

• Iowa Tests of Basic Skills
• 2009

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Purpose of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS)

• The results from the ITBS can provide unique
  information about individual students and classes
  for use in instructional planning. When used as
  intended, such batteries can be a useful
  supplement to teacher observations about what
  students are able to do, and they can provide a
  starting point for monitoring year-to-year
  student development.

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Specific Purposes for Testing

• to help determine the extent to which individual
  students have the background and skills needed to
  deal successfully with the academic aspects of an
  instructional program or a planned instructional
  sequence
• to estimate the general developmental level of
  students so that materials and instructional
  procedures may be adapted to meet individual
  needs
• to identify the areas of greatest and least
  development to use in planning individual
  instruction for early intervention
• to establish a baseline of achievement
  information so that the monitoring of
  year-to-year developmental changes may begin
• to provide information for making administrative
  programming decisions that will accommodate
  developmental differences
• to identify areas of relative strength and
  weakness in the performances of groups (e.g.,
  classes), which may have implications for
  curriculum change -- either in content or
  emphasis -- as well as for change in
  instructional procedures
• to provide a basis for reports to parents that
  will enable home and school to work together in
  the students' best interests.

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Content of the ITBS

• Reading
• Vocabulary (3-8)Each multiple-choice question on
  the Vocabulary test presents a word in the
  context of a short phrase or sentence, and
  students select the answer that most nearly means
  the same as that word. Approximately equal
  numbers of nouns, verbs, and modifiers are
  tested. The target words represent general
  vocabulary content rather than the specialized
  vocabulary used in various subject-matter areas.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Reading
• Reading Comprehension (3-8)The Reading
  Comprehension test, which is administered in two
  parts, consists of passages that vary in length
  from a few lines to a full page. Included are
  fiction, fables, tales, poetry, interviews,
  diaries, biographical sketches, science and
  social studies materials, and other nonfiction.
  Many of the passages are excerpts from previously
  published works. Approximately two-thirds of the
  questions require students to draw inferences or
  to generalize about what they have read.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Word Analysis (3rd grade only)The Word Analysis
  test provides detailed diagnostic information
  about a student's ability to identify and analyze
  distinctive features of the sounds and symbols of
  oral and written language. The items in the Word
  Analysis test measure decoding skills involving
  the knowledge of sound-letter relationships. A
  variety of skills involving sound-letter
  association, decoding, and word structure are
  represented as they apply to initial, medial, and
  final sounds and to silent letters, initial
  syllable, final syllable, suffix, and compound
  words.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Listening (3rd grade only)The Listening test
  measures the skills that students need to
  comprehend written material when it is presented
  orally. The situations in the test tap many of
  the general comprehension skills necessary for
  understanding meaning in reading, but those
  skills are applied to understanding material that
  students are more likely to hear than to read,
  such as school announcements, reports on the
  radio, brief instructions, and weather forecasts.
  The response choices are a mixture of pictorial
  and text-based stimuli so that aural, visual,
  quantitative, and verbal skills are needed in
  answering the questions. However, like the
  Reading Comprehension test, the Listening test
  requires students to comprehend both literal and
  inferential meaning. In addition, the test
  measures students' abilities to follow
  directions, understand concepts and sequences,
  and predict outcomes.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Language
• Spelling (3-8)Each Spelling question presents
  four words, one of which may be misspelled, and a
  fifth option, No mistakes, for use when all four
  words are spelled correctly. This format permits
  the testing of four spelling words for each test
  question. Errors in the tested words are based on
  common substitutions, reversals, omissions, or
  unnecessary additions.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Language
• Capitalization (3-8)The questions in the
  Capitalization test require students to identify
  errors -- undercapitalization or
  overcapitalization -- presented in brief written
  contexts. Students identify the line of text
  containing an error, or they may mark the fourth
  response, No mistakes, if no error is present.
  Capitalization of names and titles, dates and
  holidays, places, organizations and groups, and
  other words is tested. The particular skills
  tested differ from one test level to another.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Language
• Punctuation (3-8)The questions in the
  Punctuation test require students to identify
  errors in punctuation, including underpunctuation
  and overpunctuation. Students identify the line
  of writing in which an error occurs, or they may
  mark the fourth response, No mistakes, if no
  error is present. Questions relate to the use of
  terminal punctuation, commas, apostrophes,
  quotation marks, colons, and semicolons. The
  particular skills tested differ from one test
  level to another.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Language
• Usage and Expression (3-8)In the first part of
  the Usage and Expression test, each item contains
  one or two sentences arranged in three lines.
  Students must identify the line of text
  containing a usage error, or they may select No
  mistakes if they believe no error is present.
  Often a group of consecutive items contains
  continuous text, as if it were a short piece of
  writing. Errors in the use of verbs, personal
  pronouns, and modifiers are included. In the next
  part of the test, students must choose the best
  or most appropriate way of expressing an idea
  that has been presented as a sentence or a
  paragraph. Choices involve issues of conciseness,
  clarity, appropriateness of expression, and the
  organization of sentence and paragraph elements.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Mathematics
• Math Concepts and Estimation (3-8)In the first
  part of this test, Math Concepts, students must
  demonstrate an understanding of math ideas,
  relationships, and visual representations. The
  questions deal with number properties and
  operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and
  probability and statistics. The second part of
  the test is on computational estimation and
  number sense and measures students' mental
  arithmetic and estimation skills. Problems are
  presented both with and without an applied
  context, and each requires the use of one of
  several rounding or estimation methods.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Mathematics
• Math Problem Solving and Data Interpretation
  (3-8)
• Some portions of the Problem Solving and Data
  Interpretation test consist of word problems that
  require one or more steps to solve. Several
  real-world "stories" form the basis for 3-4 math
  problems, each requiring somewhat different
  skills to solve. In many cases, students select
  an appropriate method or approach, rather than
  compute an answer. In other parts of the test,
  data are presented in tables and graphs, and
  students must use the data displays to obtain
  information, compare quantities, and determine
  trends or relationships. The information shown in
  the graphics is based on content that students
  often encounter during classroom instruction.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Mathematics
• Math Computation (3-8)
• Each problem in the Math Computation test
  requires the use of one arithmetic operation --
  addition, subtraction, multiplication, or
  division. The problems require operations with
  whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and various
  combinations of these. Students must work
  problems and compare their answers with the
  choices given. The fourth option in each question
  is N, meaning the correct answer is Not given.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Social Studies (3-8)The Social Studies questions
  measure objectives of the social studies
  curriculum not tested elsewhere in the ITBS
  tests. Emphasis is on the use and understanding
  of concepts, principles, and selected types of
  visual materials. The content of the questions is
  drawn from the areas of history, geography,
  political science, economics, sociology, and
  anthropology.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Science (3-8)
• The Science test gives considerable emphasis to
  the methods and processes used in scientific
  work. In addition, many questions measure
  knowledge and skills in the areas of life
  science, earth and space sciences, and physical
  sciences. Students are required to use the
  concepts and principles of science to explain,
  infer, hypothesize, measure, and classify.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Maps and Diagrams (3-8)
• In this test, a variety of maps representing
  authentic locations is used to measure students'
  abilities to use maps for multiple purposes. The
  specific map skills tested include locating
  places, determining directions and distances, and
  interpreting data. Other questions on the test
  use charts and diagrams to measure students'
  abilities to understand information presented
  visually. The skills tested include locating
  information, explaining relationships, and making
  inferences about processes or products.

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Contents of the ITBS (continued)

• Reference Materials (3-8)
• The questions on the Reference Materials test
  measure the ability to use reference materials
  and library resources to obtain information.
  Students must have a knowledge of information
  sources and a command of strategies for using
  those sources. At all test levels there are
  questions about using search strategies,
  keywords, a dictionary, and general reference
  materials. At the lower levels, students must
  also demonstrate the ability to alphabetize and
  to use a table of contents. At the upper levels,
  additional skills tested include note-taking and
  using electronic sources and an index.

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ITBS Data Interpretation

• Types of Scores
• Raw Score (RS)The number of questions a student
  gets right on a test is the student's raw score
  (assuming each question is worth one point). By
  itself, a raw score has little or no meaning. The
  meaning depends on how many questions are on the
  test and how hard or easy the questions are. For
  example, if Kati got 10 right on both a math test
  and a science test, it would not be reasonable to
  conclude that her level of achievement in the two
  areas is the same. This illustrates why raw
  scores are usually converted to other types of
  scores for interpretation purposes.

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• Percent Correct (PC)When the raw score is
  divided by the total number of questions and the
  result is multiplied by 100, the percent-correct
  score is obtained. Like raw scores,
  percent-correct scores have little meaning by
  themselves. They tell what percent of the
  questions a student got right on a test, but
  unless we know something about the overall
  difficulty of the test, this information is not
  very helpful. Percent-correct scores are
  sometimes incorrectly interpreted as percentile
  ranks, which are described below. The two are
  quite different.

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• Grade Equivalent (GE)The grade equivalent is a
  number that describes a student's location on an
  achievement continuum. The continuum is a number
  line that describes the lowest level of knowledge
  or skill on one end (lowest numbers) and the
  highest level of development on the other end
  (highest numbers). The GE is a decimal number
  that describes performance in terms of grade
  level and months. For example, if a sixth-grade
  student obtains a GE of 8.4 on the Vocabulary
  test, his score is like the one a typical student
  finishing the fourth month of eighth grade would
  likely get on the Vocabulary test. The GE of a
  given raw score on any test indicates the grade
  level at which the typical student makes this raw
  score. The digits to the left of the decimal
  point represent the grade and those to the right
  represent the month within that grade.
• Grade equivalents are particularly useful and
  convenient for measuring individual growth from
  one year to the next and for estimating a
  student's developmental status in terms of grade
  level. But GEs have been criticized because they
  are sometimes misused or are thought to be easily
  misinterpreted. One point of confusion involves
  the issue of whether the GE indicates the grade
  level in which a student should be placed. For
  example, if a fourth-grade student earns a GE of
  6.2 on a fourth-grade reading test, should she be
  moved to the sixth grade? Obviously the student's
  developmental level in reading is high relative
  to her fourth-grade peers, but the test results
  supply no information about how she would handle
  the material normally read by students in the
  early months of sixth grade. Thus, the GE only
  estimates a student's developmental level it
  does not provide a prescription for grade
  placement. A GE that is much higher or lower than
  the student's grade level is mainly a sign of
  exceptional performance.
• In sum, all test scores, no matter which type
  they are or which test they are from, are subject
  to misinterpretation and misuse. All have
  limitations or weaknesses that are exaggerated
  through improper score use. The key is to choose
  the type of score that will most appropriately
  allow you to accomplish your purposes for
  testing. Grade equivalents are particularly
  suited to estimating a student's developmental
  status or year-to-year growth. They are
  particularly ill-suited to identifying a
  student's standing within a group or to
  diagnosing areas of relative strength and
  weakness.

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• Stanine The name stanine is simply a derivation
  of the term "standard-nine" scale. Stanines are
  normalized standard scores, ranging in value from
  1-9, whose distribution has a mean of 5 and a
  standard deviation of 2. Stanines 2 through 8 are
  equal to a ½ standard deviation unit in width,
  with the middle stanine of 5 defined as the range
  of scores ¼ of a standard deviation below to ¼ of
  a standard deviation above the mean. Stanines
  can, more easily, be thought of as coarse
  groupings of percentile ranks (see below), and
  like percentile ranks indicate the status or
  relative rank of a score within a particular
  group. Due to their coarseness, stanines are less
  precise indicators than percentile ranks, and at
  times can be misleading (e.g., similar PRs can be
  grouped into different stanines e.g., PR23 and
  PR24 and dissimilar PRs can be grouped into the
  same stanine e.g., PR24 and PR40). However,
  some find that using stanines tends to minimize
  the apparent importance of minor score
  fluctuations, and are often helpful in the
  determination of areas of strength and weakness.

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• Percentile Rank (PR)A student's percentile rank
  is a score that tells the percent of students in
  a particular group that got lower raw scores on a
  test than the student did. It shows the student's
  relative position or rank in a group of students
  who are in the same grade and who were tested at
  the same time of year (fall, midyear, or spring)
  as the student. Thus, for example, if Toni earned
  a percentile rank of 72 on the Language test, it
  means that she scored higher than 72 percent of
  the students in the group with which she is being
  compared. Of course, it also means that 28
  percent of the group scored higher than Toni.
  Percentile ranks range from 1 to 99.

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Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT)

• The Cognitive Abilities Test measures reasoning
  skills in three main areas verbal, quantitative
  and non-verbal. Please contact your teacher at
  St Rita for suggestions on methods for enhancing
  your son or daughters reasoning skills at home.

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• Thank you for viewing this ITBS presentation
  for parents. Please feel free to contact your
  teacher or Mr. Flanagan at St Rita for more
  information. Thank you.