Going Above Grade Level

CTD adding “game-changing” new above-grade-level assessment option to its menu of opportunities

By Ed Finkel

CTD’s already comprehensive array of talent identification programs and services is about to expand this fall in a way that Melissa Hinshaw, assessment coordinator, believes will be a “game-changer.”

This nationally available, online and remote Emerging Talent Identification Program (E-TIP) will involve students in grades 4 through 6 tapping into PSAT- and pre-ACT®-aligned practice tests to raise their ceilings, while those in grades 7 through 9 will use aligned practice test versions of the ACT® or SAT®.

“There is currently very little access to above-grade-level assessments like these for talented students,” she says. “This assessment practice … provides educators and parents information about what students know and can do above their current grade level, how their performance compares to other advanced students, and what programming and placement options can be considered for them.” The use of assessments in this way focuses on finding strengths and opening more doors to optimally matched learning opportunities.

Available both to individual families and at the school level, the assessments can also be used to measure growth over time and point toward effective programming for students with advanced learning needs, further informing CTD’s already “robust consulting program for families and for schools to help them understand and apply data from a variety of assessments,” Hinshaw says. The goal is to help families and schools work more collaboratively, as partners, to help program in the best way for their students.

The E-TIP joins four other assessment solutions for families and schools that CTD offers. These include the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA), an in-person assessment held on the Evanston campus for students from age 4 through grade 3, which measures reading and math skills vis-à-vis age-level normative percentile comparisons.

Another assessment, the MAP test from NWEA, is offered remotely online and measures skills for students PreK through grade 9, Hinshaw says. “It's adaptive, which means it gets harder as students answer questions correctly, and it gets easier as students answer questions incorrectly,” she says. “And it provides context around student learning readiness and achievement, as well as providing national grade-level percentiles for students.” Both KTEA and MAP are especially helpful for homeschooled or other students who don’t receive regular in-school assessments.

Thirdly, CTD offers the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT), which measures general ability in verbal, nonverbal and quantitative domains, and which CTD offers at grade level for kindergarten and first grade, and one year above for grades 2-9, Hinshaw says. “We can compare the performance of students to the other students their same age,” she says. “And it has above-grade-level context, so we can compare their performance to older learners.”

Fourthly, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Iowa, CTD will offer the Iowa Assessments above grade level to school groups looking to test students in grades 3-6 and work on interpretive material for educators who want to know more about their students’ strengths in subjects including reading, math, and science. This combined effort will further extend the Talent Search research, which has a 50+ year history of identifying and nurturing academic strengths.  

While the list of options may feel daunting at first, the choices provide greater access and opportunities to students who have a wide range of abilities and strength areas. Each assessment offers different insights and each school system makes use of data differently. We can provide the type of information needed and expand when and how assessments are administered. This is a benefit for students, families, and educators.

The Purpose of Assessments

Broadly speaking, CTD’s assessments help parents answer questions like, “What does my child’s achievement look like, and how does it compare to [that of] other talented students?” Hinshaw says. “When students are achieving at higher levels than their peers, it can sometimes mean that classroom or program level instruction may be misaligned to where these students are ready to learn.” They may need access to more advanced content.

The answer to that initial question often leads to another one: “What is my child ready to learn?” Hinshaw notes. “A mismatch between learning readiness and instruction can cause scenarios like over-instruction, where content may be too difficult for students to access; or scenarios more for advanced students, like under-instruction, where content is redundant, or a student has already mastered those skills and that knowledge. ... For advanced learners, more specifically, it can lead to boredom and often times frustration in school.”

Parents also approach CTD interested in understanding growth rates for advanced learners, which is important to measure at regular intervals to ensure students are advancing commensurate with their abilities, she says. “But that growth rate has lots of variables, like the level of instruction, the intensity of instruction, learner readiness, alignment of the assessment to standards, and the frequency with which we give that assessment,” she adds.

Myths and Misperceptions

Hinshaw believes that the general public to varying degrees has bought into several myths and misperceptions about educational assessments, in part due to negative media coverage. But assessment remains nonetheless necessary for educators to know what students are ready to learn and how quickly they’re growing in their school environments, she says.

Among the myths and misperceptions Hinshaw sees:

• All students should be focused on achieving proficiency at grade level, which is measured typically in grades 3 through 8 and in grade 11. For advanced learners, “That grade-level test is too limited to inform us about what students are learning,” she says. “The challenge here for us as educators is how to do the right-size instruction for students who already know grade-level content at the grade where they sit in school.”
• “Acceleration” means that a student is skipping an entire grade. Other possible definitions are moving ahead in one specific domain, or instruction unfolding at a much faster pace, Hinshaw says. That’s related to assessment since that helps with “diagnosing correctly what they're ready to learn, now, to ensure correct instructional placement,” she says. “We have to figure out how to raise the ceiling on the content we're measuring to know how far above a current grade level a student's ready to learn.”
• The definition of “differentiation” is limited to classroom instruction. It’s actually a broader notion that not all students are ready for the same thing at the same time—and while it’s often referring to what happens in class day to day, “it can also apply to assessments,” Hinshaw says. “Not all students need the same assessment to tell the story about their learning readiness.” In addition to students well above or below grade level, this can include English-language-learners and students with other specialized needs, she adds.

Partnering With Parents

It’s vitally important that educators and parents partner to discuss student assessment data and develop data literacy for both groups, Hinshaw says. “It’s imperative that educators be proficient in administering and interpreting student data,” she says. “And it’s also crucial for … families to understand the purpose and the use of those assessments, as well as what those data indicators mean for student success.”

To learn more about how to partner with CTD around its consulting and assessment services, please visit the CTD assessment website. If you have additional questions, please email CTD assessment staff.