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Understanding Scores

General Report

We're here to help you understand the customized score report created by your student’s school to communicate assessment results and any recommended feedback for your student. These reports provide easy-to-read test results and may also include commentary from your school about your student's progress.

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Who is ERB?

If your student attends an independent school, chances are you only know us for the ISEE—the Independent School Entrance Exam. But ERB is actually so much more than just admissions testing. We're an industry-leading educational advisory company. That means we offer schools and families a variety of different tests, educational software, and other services to help them monitor and grow a student's knowledge year after year. Some of these services are only available to schools but others are also offered directly to families.

What is this test?

Your General Report provides an overview of your student’s test scores during the school year. Scores are available for two different tests—CTP and Milestones. Your school uses only the tests that it finds most valuable, so you may receive scores for just the CTP,  just Milestones, or both.

Understanding Scores

Test Info

Your report lists the name of the test your student took as well as the year and season when they tested. The first column lists the subtests that your student took. Remember, not every school uses all available subtests, and subtests will vary by test and grade.

Scaled Scores

Scaled scores are based on the number of questions your student answered correctly as well as the difficulty of those questions. For example, if your student answered 25 hard questions correctly they will have a higher scaled score than if they answered 25 easy questions correctly.

Time on Test (Optional)

Your report may or may not include this column, as your school will decide whether or not this information is valuable for families. The time your student spent on each subtest is displayed first, followed by the maximum amount of time allowed to complete the subtest. These times are displayed in minutes.
If the allotted time says “Untimed,” then there was no set period of time for the student to complete the test. If your student's testing time says "Not Available," they took a paper test for which time was not tracked. If the time spent on the test exceeds the allotted time, your student may have received testing accommodations that allowed them to take more time.

Percentile Rank

A percentile rank indicates the percentage of students in the norm group that your student scored as well as or better than. For instance, if your student had a percentile rank of 70 in Mathematics, this would mean your student scored the same as or better than 70% of students in the norm group who also took Mathematics.
When reading this section, examine the interpretative symbols indicating your student’s performance is at, above, or below the norm group. When your student’s results are “at” the norm group, their test performance is equivalent to the scores of students in the norm group. When your student’s results are “below” the norm group, their performance is meaningfully lower than the scores of students in the norm group. When your student’s results are “above” the norm group, their performance is meaningfully higher than the scores of students in the norm group. Pay attention to the subtests where your student’s results show the highest or lowest performance compared to the norm group. This will tell you the subjects in which your student is skilled and the subjects in which they could use more help.

Stanine Rank

A stanine is another way to compare your student's performance to others. Stanines are calculated by dividing the scores of all students in a group into nine subgroups called stanines. These stanines are numbered one to nine, lowest to highest, and different percentages of students fall into each stanine.
For example, stanines 4, 5, and 6 in the center of the distribution represent the middle 54 percentile points, whereas stanines 1 to 3 and 7 to 9 represent the bottom and top 23 percentile points, respectively.

What's Next?

ERB uses the Standards for Psychological & Educational Testing to guide the development and validation of its assessments. These Standards include certain guidelines on how to use and not use test scores. ERB advises schools and families on these guidelines to promote appropriate score use.

Talk to your school if you still have questions.

Your student's school makes all administration decisions for these tests—they choose the test format, dates, subtests, and the reports that families receive. Contact your school with any additional questions about the test(s) your student took or about understanding your scores.

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