Test Scores
Student Achievement
Assessment
Though the school is presently in the process of changing its
standardized testing strategy, for years Rancho Solano has used the
Stanford Achievement Test to provide information about a student's
achievement in core academic courses. The academic areas include
reading vocabulary and comprehension, mathematics problem solving,
and language.
As you review the summary of historical Stanford Achievement Test
data represented on this page, keep in mind that there are two
scores that are best able to help you understand a student's
performance: percentile rank and stanine scores. Percentile ranks
provide a comparison of a student's performance to that of a
national sample of students in the same grade. Percentile ranks
near 50 indicate that a child's performance is about average when
compared to that of student's in the same grade. A percentile rank
above 76 indicates that a student's performance is above average. A
percentile rank below 24 indicates that a child's performance is
below average. Stanine scores provide similar information. A
stanine of 1,2, or 3 suggests that a child is performing below
average. Stanines of 4, 5, and 6 indicate that a child is
demonstrating average performance. A stanine of 7,8 or 9 indicates
above average performance.
- Provided by Arizona Department of Education,
"Understanding Tests Results, Arizona Student Achievement Program"
;
For grades 1st through 12th, Rancho Solano is presently engaged in
shifting from the Stanford Achievement Test to the Educational
Records Bureau's CTP4 test. The ERB's CTP4 is a battery of
assessments designed to provide instructionally useful information
about student performance to the school and teachers in key areas
of achievement: listening, reading, vocabulary, writing, and
mathematics. Growing out of the admissions tests for the most elite
boarding schools in the world, this norm-referenced test is used in
only 10% of schools in the United States and is generally
considered to be the "gold standard" in the world of high-achieving
academic institutions. ERB-member schools include the leading
private schools in the country as well as a select group of
suburban public schools. Rancho Solano is currently working with
the ERB to develop a revolutionary new way to track student testing
data in a way that will allow the school to track students as
individuals and determine if the school's instructional strategies
are maximizing a student's unique academic potential. Additionally,
this method of data tracking will be used to directly inform
teachers' decisions regarding differentiated instruction within
each classroom.
