Our Mother of Perpetual Help School
Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) 2011
The Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) is administered annually in the spring to all students in grades 3 through 8 in the Diocese of Harrisburg. The purpose of this testing is to assess educational achievement and to guide future instruction.
The ITBS is a norm-referenced test that yields an estimate of the position of the tested student in a predefined population, with respect to the trait being measured. Thus this type of test determines a student's placement on a normal distribution curve. It might be said, students compete against each other on this type of assessment. The data available to Diocesan schools allows us to compare our school’s achievement with the composite of schools across the diocese.
Following are reports of OMPH School scores and Diocese of Harrisburg scores based on the National Percentile Rank (NPR) compared to National School Norms and the National Percentile Rank (NPR) compared to National Student Norms.
§ School Norms consist of scores of school-building grade groups representative of such groups nationally; that is, a building is being compared to other buildings.
§ Student Norms consist of scores of individual students in a given grade and this group of students representative of students nationally; that is, a student is being compared with other individual students.
§ The averages that make up School Norms are much less variable than the scores that make up Student Norms in that schools are more similar to one another than students are.
The Performance Profile
The Performance Profile lists OMPH scores and Diocesan scores compared to both National School Norms and National Student Norms.
§ The NPR listed to the left in set of numbers is in bold; this is the test score based on National Student Norms. The score identifies the percent of students in the nation in this grade with a score lower on the test, total or composite.
§ An example of reading this score:
o In Grade 3 the NPR of 70 for the Core Total means the typical student in the Diocese scored higher than 70 percent of the third grade students in the nation.
o The NPR of 73 (blue number) for the Core Total in Grade 3 means that the typical student in third grade at OMPH scored higher than 73 percent of third grade students in the nation.
§ The NPR listed to the right in each set of numbers is the score based on National School Norms. Percentile ranks from School Norms are used to help identity group strengths and areas in need of support.
§ An example of reading this score:
o The NPR 85 for Core Total in Grade 3 means that the average of the third grade students in the Diocese of Harrisburg scored higher than 85 percent of the average of the third grade students in the nation.
o The NPR of 89 (blue number) for Core Total in Grade 3 means that the average of the third grade students in OMPH scored higher than 89 percent of the average of the third grade students in the nation.
Grade Level Charts
The grade level charts detail each class’s score in all tests and subtests showing OMPH scores and Diocesan scores based on National School Norms. The charts display the same information as the Performance Profile as a visual display. This may more readily allow us to see the students’ performance on each test relative to the other test areas.
A review of Performance Profile and the Grade Level Charts will show our students scored very well in the tests. Based on the National School Norms most classes scored a NPR of 90 or higher in the core total indicating that the students scored higher than 90 percent of the students who took the test in the group of students used to establish the norms. Additionally most classes scored higher than the Diocesan average on the core total and in most sub-tests. The test results demonstrate our students’ mastery of content material and attest to their strong academic achievement.