Description of ITBS Ancillary Test Materials

The publications listed below were designed to be used with various activities that occur prior to and after the administration of the ITBS. Some of these materials have been furnished to schools without charge as a benefit of program participation. Additional copies and replacements can be purchased. Still other materials are available for purchase by schools as they need them. (The cost, if any, of each publication is provided on the registration form that is used for ordering materials each year.) This page describes how each of these documents is intended to be used.

Directions for Administration

The booklet provides basic information about the individual tests within the ITBS battery and details procedures to be used when administering the tests. Each teacher who will administer the tests should have a personal copy of this manual to keep for reference purposes.

A Message to Parents

Two versions of this brochure are available, one for grades K-2 and one for grades 3-8. The document is intended to be sent home to parents prior to testing to inform them about the nature of the tests in the ITBS battery their child will take. This is not a practice test, and it should not be used as or referred to as a practice test. There is no need to provide one of these brochures to every child's parents every year. Rather, your district might provide them to parents of students who will be testing with the ITBS for the first time. The brochure should be helpful for updating parents who may only be familiar with older forms of the ITBS. This report is also available in Spanish.

Report to Parents or Report to Students and Parents

The first of these two four-page leaflets is for use with students who are in grades K-2, and the second is for use with students who are in grades 3-8. A press-on label that is furnished as part of the standard scoring service is designed to be affixed to one page of this leaflet. The leaflet for grades 3-8 also contains questions students can answer about their own scores as a means of helping them understand and use their results. This report is also available in Spanish.

Student Record Folder

This manila folder is intended to be used as a storage file of test results for a given student. On the inside there is a place to affix the press-on label that is furnished as part of the standard scoring service. The back of the folder has a Student Profile Chart, a place to graph the student's grade equivalents from each year. One copy of this folder should be ordered for each student who has not previously tested with Form A or B.

Profile Chart for Averages

The purpose of this chart is to allow the user to graph the percentile ranks of building or system grade groups so that the relative strengths and weaknesses of each group might be identified. When more than one grade group is graphed on the same page, patterns of curricular strengths and weaknesses might be revealed. One side of the page is for use with grades K-2 scores and the other is for grades 3-8.

Interpretive Guide for Teachers and Counselors

There is one version of this guide for grades K-2 and another for grades 3-8. Every teacher and counselor who has an opportunity to use ITBS scores should have a personal copy to keep as a reference. The guide includes information about the test content, sample illustrations of various score reports, detailed suggestions about how to use the test scores, and suggestions for reporting results to students and their parents.

Interpretive Guide for School Administrators

The main purpose of this guide is to provide information to help school administrators interpret and use ITBS scores wisely. Score reports that focus on the administrative uses of test results are illustrated, and procedures for accomplishing a variety of administrative uses are described. Background on test content and the several types of scores used on ITBS score reports are also included. Every central office and building administrator should have a copy of this guide. Curriculum coordinators, counselors, and other staff who have district-wide responsibilities for score use and interpretation also should have personal copies for reference use.

Norms and Score Conversions

There are separate versions of this manual for Form A and Form B, and every building should have its own copy of each manual. The tables in these manuals are used for converting raw scores to other scores with national norms -- national standard score, national grade equivalent, national percentile rank (both student norms and school norms), and normal curve equivalent. Separate tables, available from Iowa Testing Programs, are needed to change raw scores into Iowa standard scores. Once the Iowa standard scores are in hand, the tables in the Norms and Score Conversions manual are used to obtain Iowa grade equivalents and Iowa percentile ranks (student norms only). Iowa percentile ranks for school norms are found with yet another table which is available from Iowa Testing Programs.

Guide to Research and Development

This Guide documents all the technical information about the Iowa Tests and contains references to the published research about the development and use of scores from the tests. Details about the national standardization and the norms developed from it are given, and separate chapters are devoted to score validity and reliability. Technical information about the ITBS and ITED batteries as well as the related programs in such areas as writing and listening is included.

Iowa Test Coordinator's Manual

The purpose of this manual is to describe the operational procedures for using the ITBS that are unique to Iowa schools. In addition, differences in materials and services available to Iowa schools, compared with their national counterparts, are identified. Because the procedures of Iowa Testing Programs may change somewhat from year to year, some information in this manual may become dated after several years. The annual written communications to district test coordinators highlight these changes.

Test Coordinator Guide for the Iowa Tests

This Guide was designed for use by individuals who have responsibility for coordinating assessment activities in a building or entire district. In addition to descriptive information about the tests and testing materials, there are parts dealing with establishing various policies related to using assessments. Other parts relate to planning, lists of coordinator responsibilities, preparing students for testing, coding demographic information, and reporting results to others.