We're in Illinois, So Why Do We Take The Iowa Test?
The Iowa Assessments, formerly known as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, is actually a nationally used test to measure the "adequate yearly progress", the AYP in educational language, of students in school. It is called the Iowa test because this particular test was developed at the University of Iowa. And while it is widely used to measure AYP in Iowa schools, somewhere between 3 and 4 million students across the country also take this test.
About four years ago, the Christian school organization to which we belong, the Association of Christian Schools International, began recommending the use of the Iowa test to its members. It is estimated that at least 500,000 students in ACSI Christian schools take the Iowa test each year. We will get a better idea of where we stand in comparison to other Christian schools sometime next fall when ACSI releases its research on Iowa testing in its schools.
Based on last year's rankings, MCA ranks right up there among the best when it comes to the private and parochial schools in Illinois and in Chicago who take the Iowa Assessments. Data from other assessments Illinois private schools use isn't always easy to compare, but we know from having some of our students also take the MAP test, also known as the NWEA, and from NAEP samples, and from Illinois recent "right sizing" of its proficiency rating that about 90% of our students are "proficient" or above in mathematics and reading.
So How Do We Measure AYP Using the Iowa Test?
The test uses two specific measurements of student progress. One is called a "stanine" score. This is a scale which measures student performance against the standards established by the test on a scale using the numbers 1 to 9, hence, the "standard nine". The number of correct answers on any specific part of the test is compared to a standard score in that subject area and grade level to come up with the "stanine" score. A score of 5 is the mid-point, or the average stanine score for each test, so the further to the right a student scores, the higher their level of achievement.
The percentile rank is reflected in the use of a 100 point scale. This compares the score earned by a student to a "norm group" which calculates the average score of a specific group of students who took the test. So when you see a student in the 65th percentile, that doesn't mean they got 65% of the questions correct, it means they did better than 65% of all students in the norm group who took the same test.
The norm group is divided into four equal quartiles, with 25% of the students scoring an average composite score between the first percentile and the 25th percentile, 25% of the students scoring between the 26th and 50th percentile, 25% of the students scoring between the 51st and 75th percentile, and 25% of the students scoring between the 76th and 100th percentile. So if a school's students score exactly as the test standards expect, the school's composite score would be the 50th percentile. If a graph is used to illustrate this, it looks like a bell, and is called a "bell curve." For the norm group, the highest point of the bell curve is exactly in the middle, at the 50th percentile.
But you can move the top of MCA's bell curve 17 points to the right. On the composite score of the test, almost 75% of MCA students are in the top two quartiles, with a significant number of students in the top quartile. But that's just the composite score.
We actually had multiple grade levels where the composite scores on some of the specific tests were actually above the 90th percentile. The highest overall scores on the test were in Mathematics Computation, where we not only had whole grade levels above the 90th percentile, but where we had multiple students who earned a perfect score. Next to that, the lower grades really hammered out a big win in the Reading, Vocabulary and Language Arts tests, with scores ranging from the 85th percentile to the 95th percentile.
Other Observations From the MCA Scores
There are a few things we have observed, over the past four years of Iowa tests, that seem to be trends here at MCA:
- Kindergarten reading scores are exceptionally high. The test doesn't account for kindergarten students reading by the end of the year but ours do. Students who have been in Pre-k learn what the test standards have in place for Kindergarten, so they master those skills early in the year.
- The longer students are enrolled at MCA, the better they do on the Iowa Assessment. At this point, for this year's test, I've gone through about 50% of the scores at all grade levels and this is true for about 7 out of 10 students. Looking primarily at Middle School, most of the higher scores are earned by students who have been here since Pre-K.
- We made a decision in 2018 to switch from Singapore Math to Purposeful Design, and the mathematics scores have gone up each year, including the three Terra Nova assessments we did prior to 2022.
- In the English/Language Arts core, scores have remained steady at above average levels, noting that 40% of our students come from homes where English is a second language.
- We have a record number of students this year, across every grade level, who either earned a perfect score on one of the tests, or in a core area, and who were among those who finished in the top 3% nationally.
- Using the sports analogy, if the whole school is the Cougar team, then it was the elementary level grades, K through 5, who "carried" the Cougars to the win. Reading and Mathematics computation were the big touchdowns that were scored.
Academic Achievement is Expected, Spiritual Development is Essential
In the world of American education, with the public, government funded educational system accounting for 90% of the enrolled students, the academic advantage of any private school, religious-based or secular, can be easily measured by assessments like the Iowa test. Christian schools are no exception. We know what our advantages are, including small class sizes, a much higher degree of parent involvement, and teachers who are committed to teaching as a ministry, not just a job. Christian schools generally perform better than the public schools that surround them, at about the same percentage level across the board, depending on where a state has set its educational bar.
In Illinois, where public schools are among those in the top half of states in the country, I think we rank 16th or 17th, the academic level in private schools is higher than it is in other places where the educational bar is lower. But we also need to keep in mind that what makes our school unique is not just its academic achievement, but the fact that parents put their children here because of the Christian discipleship element. In the United States, the development of public education was in the hands of mostly Protestant Christians until after the Second World War, so much so in fact, that the Catholic church developed a system of parochial schools which it underwrote with its budget because it was losing children of church members to the Protestants who were converting them in public school.
Those days are long gone. But what we have learned from Catholic education is its value to the life and ministry of the church. What we haven't learned is how to support it like they once did.
We've left that up to our parents. And what we also leave in their hands is the recommendation they provide for us regarding the quality of the education we provide. Student achievement speaks well of MCA. We would like for our parents to also speak well of the school that has done so much on less than half of the financial resources it takes public schools to teach one student.