Designed to assist in the initial placement of students in a secondary mathematics curriculum. While teacher recommendations could be sufficient for many schools, larger districts may have multiple mathematics teachers, each of whom may have different standards for rating students. Also, for students just transferring into a school system, comparable ratings from other school systems would not be available.

This test provides a standardized method to provide objective information to augment teacher recommendations, when available, to help in determining when students are algebra ready.

There are four parts to the IAAT, which have been aligned to the recent NCTME standards:

a) Interpreting mathematical information-includes graphs and mathematical concepts to determine how well a student can learn new material presented graphically or textually.

b) Translating to symbols-presents word problems to assess how well a student can translate to an algebraic expression or equation.

c) Finding relationships-each item is a relationship between two numbers presented in a table; student must find the general rule for the relationship.

d) Using symbols-presents common misconceptions about variable, equation, and order of operation, removing parentheses, commutatively, consecutive integers, number line estimates, and variation of one number in an expression when others are held constant.

Notes:

1) Appropriate for 7th and 8th grade students.

2) Norms are based on nationwide sample of 8th grade students tested in 1991.

3) Raw scores (and national percentiles) are provided for each of the four parts and also an overall total score. Students are listed a) alphabetically b) highest to lowest on total score.

4) MSTP provides a machine-scorable answer sheet and next-day return of results-test results are mailed to school the next workday after receipt of tests for scoring.

5) Cut-scores are not provided; each school will have to use its own experiential data to adjust cut-scores to its particular curriculum and emphasis. However, national percentiles assist in providing normative information.