Testing 101: The Test Result Score They Don’t Want You to Have

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt you needed to act as if you understood something when the fact is you knew you didn’t get it? I think most of us will admit to this. Sometimes we find ourselves in a conversation where we feel the need to nod our heads in “agreement” and supply a sufficient number of “yes’s” and “rights” but basically our level of understanding is pretty low…perhaps non-existent.

Many discussions about the grade equivalent score on an achievement test report are like this, but why would a private school, public school, or government agency decide to withhold this information from you? Because they’ve been told to.

The problem is that we’re often convinced we do understand the meaning of this score when actually we don’t, and this misunderstanding translates into a false picture of the achievement level of the student. Beneath our misunderstanding is often a bigger problem: our attitude and resistance to truly understanding the score.

If you look at the sample report on our website, you’ll find that the Grade Equivalent scores (GE) follow the Stanine scores (S9) as you look across the report from left to right.

The student taking this test was testing at the end of eight grade. The grade equivalent score for reading is 6.0, meaning sixth grade, beginning of the year (September). Does this score mean the student is three years behind grade level? Should the parent be discouraged?

The grade equivalent score for math is 10.6, meaning tenth grade, the month of March. Does this score mean the student is about two years above grade level? Should the parent consider skipping a couple of math books and placing their student into an advanced math course?

The scale for grade equivalent scores range from 0.0 to 12.9 (sometimes expressed as 13.0), representing the thirteen years of school, kindergarten through the end of twelfth grade. The first digit represents the year; the second digit represents the month. 8.0 would mean eight grade, first month of the school year (September); 8.1 would mean eight grade, second month (October); 8.2 would mean eight grade, third month (November), etc.

A grade equivalent score represents the grade and month in school of students in the norm group whose test performance is theoretically equivalent to the test performance of the student on a report. The norm group is a sampling of students nationwide. Again, looking at our sample report, the grade equivalent for the total score is 9.3. This means that the average raw score (the number right out of the number possible) for students at the end of grade 8 who were part of the norm group for this test was 60 out of 91.

That’s all that it means. Nothing more.

The student in our sample report whose grade equivalent of 9.9 for language does not mean that he or she has mastered all the skills typically taught in grade 9. Again, it simply means that the student’s performance on this test is theoretically equivalent to students in the norm group who had completed the month of June for grade 9. For these students, their average raw score was 18 out of 26.

A little confused? It’s understandable. My head spins too…

Back to the math test grade equivalent score. While we can confidently say that this student’s understanding of math as measured by this test is considerably better than the average eight grader, it would be a mistake to “skip” a couple of text books on the basis of this score and place him in advanced math If the student in our sample were to be given the math test designed for tenth graders, it’s likely his grade equivalent score would fall to a much lower level.

Because it’s so easy to misunderstand and misapply grade equivalent scores, achievement test publishers strongly recommend that schools and other educational agencies not report grade equivalent scores to parents unless a thorough explanation accompanies the score.

Hopefully, this clarifies what grade equivalents are and what they are not.

Thanks for reading!

Curt Bumcrot, MRE

• We’ve been meeting with our friends at Exodus Books about an exciting new development. They’ll be sharing the news tomorrow, so if you haven’t already, go to  exodusbooks.com to catch the announcement.