G.R.A.C.E.
Homeschool Support Group
Group Resources And Christian Encouragement
by Holly Scheppegrell
- Don’t stress your child out.
- Follow all that advice that you have always heard. Make sure your child gets plenty
of sleep. Get up with plenty of time to get ready, so your morning is not overly
rushed. Make sure your child eats a good breakfast, preferably with some protein.
- It is best to have prepared your child with a practice test. Make sure your child
understands:
- how to “color in the circle.”
- that the proctor CANNOT explain the directions further.
- to keep on the right line. (Does she need a ruler to help?)
- to check every time she turns a page, to make sure she is in the right section
and right problem number.
- to manage her time. (Would bringing a watch help or hinder?)
- The other important point here is to be sure you and your child understands your
objectives in taking the test. Explain that it is a state requirement. Let him know
what your expectations are for him. I try to keep the tone light, yet let them know
that I expect their best effort. For my younger child, I usually say something to the
effect of, “this test helps Mom choose the best school books for you next year.”
- For the test to be useful as a diagnostic tool, encourage your child to make only
educated guesses.
- An educated guess is when he can confidently eliminate 2 of the 4 answers. At that
point, he still doesn’t exactly know the answer, but it has to be one of the two left.
NOW, GUESS. If you child cannot eliminate any answers or has no idea what the
question is asking for, please encourage him to LEAVE IT BLANK. Random guessing can
actually adversely affect your child’s score. We see this in the Math section. It is
much better for your child to attempt fewer problems and get them mostly correct than
to randomly answer in an attempt to have every answer filled and consequently get a
lot incorrect.
- Take the results with a grain of salt. When you receive the test results, sit down
and take a deep breat and RELAX. This test is just a snapshot in your child’s entire
photo album. You know what level of work your child performs every day. You know what
your child’s God-given gifts and abilities are. Take all this into account when you
review the results.
- You will receive a sheet from BJU that explains some of the testing terminology. The
biggies are “national percentile rank”, “stanine”, and “grade equivalent”.
- National percentile rank (NPR) – This does not refer to how many your child got
correct, but to how they rank within their age/grade group.
- Nationally-normed tests, such as the Iowa, use the traditional bell curve. This
means that fully 54% of the children tested fall in the “average” range or the
23% to 76% of the NPR. This is average. A picture is worth a thousand words and
there will be a picture of this in your results explanation page. So, the advice
here is to not freak out if your child gets 50%. This just means that he was
exactly in the middle of the group – 49 kids scored higher and 49 kids scored
lower. It is o.k. to fall in the average range, and honestly, it stands to reason,
statistically, that is where half of the GRACE kids will fall.
- Stanine (NS) – This is closely related to the NPR. The top group (4% of the
children nation-wide) who score in the 95% and over NPR will be labeled NS 9.
And so forth on down the line. Again, statistically, half of the kids will fall
in NS 4,5,and 6 – the average of the group.
- Grade Equivalent (GE) – This does NOT mean what grade level your child is working
at. If your child is in fourth grade and scored a GE of 5.2 in math, this means
she scored as many correct as a typical early fifth grader. This score is most
useful to identify trends.
- What does this mean? How do you evaluate?
- Look at trends over the years. It is very important to stay with the same
test and testing at approximately the same time of year. You can review the
results from year to year and see how your child is progressing. You should
see that the NS is roughly the same and that the GE is increasing with each
year. If you want to get really ambitious, graph the GE out. Make the left
hand measure the GE. Make the bottom line measure the tests: vocabulary,
comprehension, language, spelling, etc. And then use a different color to
show the results from each year. You should be seeing steady, gradual progress.