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"Creating assessment networks for schools"

These definitions were developed by the Salt Lake City District. The definitions are given to parents as an aid to understanding their student's assessment results.

Criterion Referenced Tests

(CRTs)

Criterion-referenced tests are multiple-choice tests developed by the Utah State Office of Education. CRTs are designed to measure how well a student learned the core content taught in their classrooms.

•  1-6 Language Arts
•  1-6 Mathematics
•  4-6 Science

Scores fall within four levels of mastery:

The CRT tests are also used to measure a school's overall performance on National accountability measures of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and State accountability measures of UTAH Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS).

Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy

(DIBELS )

This is a group of one minute tests that measure literacy skills. It measures how well a student's reading is developing and if they are on the path to becoming a fluent reader, which means they read quickly and accurately enough to understand grade level material.

Oral reading fluency (speed) is used in first through sixth grade and is measured by the number of words a child can read correctly in one minute.

Student performances on individual DIBELS measurements are combined for an instructional recommendation:

• Intensive intervention for students needing a great deal of intervention
• Strategic intervention for students who need some targeted intervention
• Benchmark indicating students perform on grade

Kindergarten and Grade One measurements include initial sound fluency, letter names, phonemic segmentation, nonsense word fluency, and oral reading fluency.

Grades Two and Six measure oral reading fluency.

Iowa Test of Basic Skills

(ITBS )

This is a standardized or norm-referenced test that gives a national comparison of student performance. Individual scores are compared to a “norm” group which is comprised of a comparable sampling of students nationwide. ITBS scores are reported in several ways; most commonly as “national percentile” (NP).

Percentile ranks range from 1 to 99. The average percentile score is 50. The individual percentile shows a student's relative position or rank compared to the norm group. For example, if a student earned a percentile rank of 62 on the language test, it means that she/he scored higher than 62 percent of the students in the norm group.

The other reported score is a grade level equivalent (GE) . The GE is a decimal number that describes performance in terms of year and month in school. For example, if a fifth-grade student obtains a GE of 6.4 on the reading test, his/her score is like the score a typical student finishing the fourth month of sixth grade would likely get on the reading test.

The ITBS is given in the fall of grades 3-5, measuring, reading language, mathematics, social studies and science and a composite score which is a total of all tests.