G.R.A.C.E.

Test Taking Tips

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.