Please see the glossary for a list of terms and their meanings.

Fall testing usually occurs during the month of October. Spring testing usually occurs during the months of April and May. However, testing can occur anytime during the school year. Interest inventories can occur anytime during the year. Please refer to MSTP order forms for norming dates and pricing information.

No. Our scanning equipment cannot process photocopied answer sheets. Please call our MSTP customer service at 612-626-1803 for additional answer sheets.

MSTP provides testing materials two to three weeks prior to your testing dates.

Please refer to the MSTP order form for all the various scoring and reporting options available to all other types of schools.

Testing times vary depending on the test. Please access the Tests & Services to further identify testing times.

MSTP has a two week turnaround guarantee on all tests. However, MSTP's average turnaround is currently three days.

All unused testing materials should be sent back with the completed tests, you are only billed for what you use or don't return.

Yes, but the student will not be included in any group reports.

Bills will be sent when the testing materials have been returned and the reports have been processed. Home schools are required to prepay and do not receive a bill.

Yes.

If you have not ordered any extra books, call MSTP immediately for replacement books. When returning test materials, be sure to keep these books separated from the others and include a note stating that the books were written in when you received them.

The school will be charged for any damaged or written in books. Again, please keep these books separated from the rest.

State law requires that all non-accredited schools must have their students complete a nationally normed standardized test.

Minnesota State Legislation: Subdivision 11 requires a signature by the school district.

You may purchase practice tests directly through Riverside Publishing at 1-800-323-9540, extension 7009. They come in groups of 25 booklets.

The ITBS and ITED Interpretive Guide for Teachers and Counselors, available through Riverside Publishing, may have suggestions for the educational development of students. For example, Part 5 of the ITBS manual has fifteen pages of specific suggestions for developing skills for all the tests in the Complete Battery edition of the ITBS and Part 8 contains a bibliography of selected supplemental instructional resources.

For home school parents, some other suggestions include discussing possible out-of-school activities with your child's teacher(s) or your home-school resource person. Select resource materials which will help your child build on relative strengths and remediate areas of relative need. Just as the very accomplished youngster can be challenged with new materials, even the most educationally disadvantaged child has relative strengths to build on.

Avoid the excessive use of rote learning materials. A balanced reading program that integrates phonics with written and spoken word will help children become successful readers and writers. Mathematic programs that focus on concepts and problem-solving and integrate these skills with the necessary computational skills are much more likely to improve children's mathematical skills than rote computation activities. Language problems that integrate language conventions - spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and usage - with writing and similar learning programs in science and social studies also promote real learning.

Tables of correlations are available in the CogAT Research Handbook. From the correlations it is quite clear that most students score at or near the same percentile rank on The Iowa Tests and CogAT. Average correlations with the ITBS Composite score are 0.83 for the Verbal Battery, 0.77 for the Quantitative Battery, and 0.71 for the Nonverbal Battery. For ITED average correlations with the Composite score are 0.84 for the Verbal Battery, 0.75 for the Quantitative Battery, and 0.70 for the Nonverbal Battery. Clearly, the relationship is substantial. The Nonverbal Battery, with its lower correlations, appears to be a good indicator of ability that is somewhat less dependent on academic achievement.

The best preparation for taking any achievement test is concentrated effort related to classroom activities, completion of homework, engaging in activities beyond assigned homework, and undertaking a wide variety of projects which will improve the depth and breadth of a student's knowledge.

The ITBS measures basic skills that range from facts and conventions through higher-order skills, not just minimum skills. Since The Iowa Tests were conceived nearly sixty years ago, the authors have consistently defined "basic skills" as a wide range of skills including applying information, making inferences, evaluating, explaining, and other higher-order skills. By grade 8, over half of the ITBS test questions measure these higher-order skills. In grades 9-12, ITED focuses primarily on these advanced skills. Therefore, home and school activities need to include a wide range of basic skills appropriate to the child's age/grade.