Obtaining ITBS Scoring Services
About the same time that test materials are shipped to a school district, a packet
of information, including the pink Order for Scoring Services (OSS), is sent by
U.S. mail to the testing coordinator. The OSS should be completed and returned along
with student answer documents to ensure that scoring is done in a timely manner
and that all of the optional reports needed by the district will be provided. "Instructions
for Filling Out the Order for Scoring Service," included in the packet, contain
brief descriptions of each service and its cost.
The Interpretive Guide for School Administrators, which provides a description
and an illustration of each report, is the most comprehensive source of information
about the various reports offered by Iowa Testing Programs. In particular, Part
4 of the Guide identifies reports that are designed for certain purposes or particular
audiences or users. For example, one report might be more appropriate when using
test scores for curriculum review, another when communicating with the local school
board, and yet another when informing parents about their child's test results.
Certain score reports used by most school districts depend on demographic information
that needs to be furnished on a bar code file or coded on each student's answer
document. When subgroup reports based on breakdowns by gender, racial/ethnic classification,
socio-economic status, or some other variable are needed, these can only be obtained
if the coding of information has been properly completed before documents are returned
for scoring. Directions for coding are on the web page
Coding for Disaggregation.
If separate reports are needed for students with IEPs, the documents of such students
need to be coded as directed by ITP. In addition, the documents of those students
need to be arranged within the stack of returned documents so that the reports will
be produced according to the district's reporting needs. The directions for returning
test materials to the scoring center describe how documents of students with IEPs
should be handled to meet the varying reporting needs of districts.
Late Requests
Once a district's scoring order is in the processing stream, it is not possible
to change the original order. However, if additional services or reports are desired,
the district can make its request via telephone to ITP. Furthermore, if a district
finds that it needs reports or services based on test results from a previous year,
a phone request can be made for this also. In addition to the regular cost of the
service, a late fee is assessed for each previous order for which a request is made.
It generally takes approximately ten working days for late-request services to be
processed and shipped. Because these late requests require considerable special
handling, it generally is not possible to fill the request in less time.
Handscoring
For certain situations, the handscoring service provided by Iowa Testing Programs
is the best option to use. For example, answer documents from nearly all home-schooled
students who are tested with the ITBS are scored by hand; they are not processed
with a school group. Students who finish testing late because of illness or absence
might be handled separately so that their document does not hold up the processing
of the entire district.
To obtain handscoring, the district should send the student's document to ITP by
U.S. mail. ITP will score it and produce a one-page report containing all scores
for that student. (Note that none of the optional score reports is available when
hand scoring is done.) The report will be mailed to the school and the charges will
be added to the district's invoice when ITP bills for other materials and services
used by the school that year. The answer document will be retained by ITP for the
remainder of the current school year.
