ERB TESTING REPORT - Cary Academy

ERB TESTING REPORT
Middle School, May 2012
In May 2012, students in grades six through eight took the Educational Records
Bureau’s CTP 4 standardized test (ERB’s). The CTP 4 is a battery of tests
designed to provide information about student performance in key areas of the
school curriculum: reading, vocabulary, writing and mathematics. The tests also
contain reasoning assessments in language arts and mathematics. The
achievement and reasoning sections are intended to provide comparisons
between what the student is learning at a particular point in school (achievement
tests) and how well the student can call upon higher-level thinking skills to solve
problems (the reasoning tests). An explanation of the test areas follows at the
end of the report.
The following charts provide a summary of the results from those tests. The
information is taken from data in the Administrator’s Summary, and displays our
students’ performance by grade, test area, and percentile rank.
The results compare the performance of our students at the 25 th, 50 th and 75 th
percentiles to the performance of students at the same grade in independent
(schools similar to Cary Academy) and national school populations (urban,
suburban, rural, affluent, impoverished, large, and small). For example, on the
verbal reasoning test, our sixth grade students at the 50 th percentile are at the
94 th percentile when compared with the national population, and at the 71 st
percentile when compared with an independent school population. This means
that a Cary Academy student in the middle of last year’s sixth grade class earned
a score in verbal reasoning that was equal to or higher than scores earned by 94
percent of sixth grade students nationally. The scores of this student are also
equal to or higher than 71 percent of his or her independent school peers.
In reviewing all test areas and grade levels at the 25 th percentile, 50 th percentile
and 75 th percentile, we can conclude that our students, grades 6-8, performed
significantly higher on all test areas than the national population. We can also
conclude that the performance of our students, grades 6-8, is equal to or higher
than that of the independent school population on all test areas.
Please feel free to contact Marti Jenkins at 228-4570 should you have questions
about the report.
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Sixth Grade ERB Results – Spring 2012
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 25 56 88
VOCABULARY 25 42 90
READING COMPREHENSION 25 51 81
WRITING MECHANICS 25 44 88
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 25 54 91
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 25 59 91
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 25 60 85
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 50 71 94
VOCABULARY 50 68 96
READING COMPREHENSION 50 71 95
WRITING MECHANICS 50 64 94
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 50 71 96
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 50 72 95
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 50 75 92
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 75 86 99
VOCABULARY 75 81 98
READING COMPREHENSION 75 90 99
WRITING MECHANICS 75 86 98
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 75 86 98
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 75 88 98
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 75 89 97
*Percentile rank is the percentage of students in the norm sample whose scores fall at or below a
given score. A percentile rank indicates a student’s relative standing in a norming sample, it does
not indicate the score itself. The 50 th percentile corresponds to the median, and indicates that a
student scored higher than half of the sample and lower than the other half.
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SEVENTH GRADE ERB RESULTS – SPRING 2012
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 25 54 90
VOCABULARY 25 46 88
READING COMPREHENSION 25 45 79
WRITING MECHANICS 25 47 87
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 25 42 87
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 25 53 93
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 25 60 94
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 50 72 94
VOCABULARY 50 68 95
READING COMPREHENSION 50 66 88
WRITING MECHANICS 50 64 93
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 50 59 93
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 50 75 98
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 50 81 98
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 75 88 98
VOCABULARY 75 87 99
READING COMPREHENSION 75 84 95
WRITING MECHANICS 75 87 98
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 75 82 97
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 75 86 99
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 75 91 99
*Percentile rank is the percentage of students in the norm sample whose scores fall at or below
a given score. A percentile rank indicates a student’s relative standing in a norming sample, it
does not indicate the score itself. The 50 th percentile corresponds to the median, and indicates
that a student scored higher than half of the sample and lower than the other half.
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EIGHTH GRADE ERB RESULTS – SPRING 2012
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 25 52 92
VOCABULARY 25 47 89
READING COMPREHENSION 25 48 88
WRITING MECHANICS 25 58 92
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 25 54 89
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 25 59 94
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 25 68 96
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 50 72 97
VOCABULARY 50 66 95
READING COMPREHENSION 50 68 94
WRITING MECHANICS 50 75 97
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 50 76 95
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 50 79 97
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 50 82 98
*PERCENTILE RANKS
TEST AREA CARY ACADEMY INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
VERBAL REASONING 75 87 99
VOCABULARY 75 81 98
READING COMPREHENSION 75 85 99
WRITING MECHANICS 75 89 99
WRITING CONCEPTS AND SKILLS 75 88 98
QUANTITATIVE REASONING 75 90 99
MATHEMATICS 1 & 2 75 91 99
*Percentile rank is the percentage of students in the norm sample whose scores fall at or below a
given score. A percentile rank indicates a student’s relative standing in a norming sample, it does
not indicate the score itself. The 50 th percentile corresponds to the median, and indicates that a
student scored higher than half of the sample and lower than the other half.
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Description of CTP 4 Achievement Tests
Verbal Reasoning: the ability to analyze information and draw logical inferences, to
recognize analogical verbal relationships, and to generalize verbal categorical attributes
Auditory Comprehension: pre-reading vocabulary and comprehension of orally
presented material, understanding of stated information, the ability to determine the gist
of short passages, and the ability to infer information based on these passages
Vocabulary: recognition and understanding of a wide range of grade-appropriate
vocabulary and use of context clues to determine meaning
Reading Comprehension: comprehension of written material, including recall of
information, identifying of main ideas, and hypothesizing using information from
passages
Reading for Understanding: (with constructed-response questions): the ability to
communicate understanding of explicit and implicit information presented in passages
and the ability to compare and contrast explicit and implicit information from two related
passages
Writing Mechanics: understanding of spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and usage
conventions
Writing Concepts and Skills: understanding of the components of effective written
composition
Mathematics: conceptual understanding of mathematics, application of mathematical
knowledge to solve problems, and the ability to compute or estimate solutions
Mathematics (with constructed-response questions): the ability to communicate in the
language of mathematics
Quantitative Reasoning: the ability to analyze mathematical concepts and principles, to
make generalizations, and to compare quantities mathematically
Algebra I: skills typically taught in Algebra I with emphasis on problem solving and
operations with variables, equations, and algebraic geometry
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