Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment EXPLORE test sample questions on ACT's website

Wow. Yes, it was the reading. Did your district post scaled-to-raw-score conversions, or something else that allowed people to know how many answers they got right?

(NUMATS reported that no kids scored 24 on Reading, which I assume indicates that no raw score mapped to a 24, but there were kids who scored 20, 21, and 23, so presumably there were some versions of the test that scaled up differently.)

Both DS and DD thought the sample questions were easier than the actual test questions.

If you are really wondering whether sample questions are predictive of the actual scores, then the answer depends on your child.

For my DS, who is more advanced, you can say that performance on the samples predicted performance on the actual test. For my DD, who is not as advance, doing really well on the sample questons did not necessarily translate to top scores on the Explore. That seems to hold true for them on other out of level tests like SCAT.

Wow. Yes, it was the reading. Did your district post scaled-to-raw-score conversions, or something else that allowed people to know how many answers they got right?

(NUMATS reported that no kids scored 24 on Reading, which I assume indicates that no raw score mapped to a 24, but there were kids who scored 20, 21, and 23, so presumably there were some versions of the test that scaled up differently.)

Since we took the test through NUMATS, I didn't get a lot of what my district sent home. However, the information above was posted on our district gifted group's website. Apparently, some parents of 8th grade gifted/advanced kids were having a heart attack worrying that little Susie or Johnny wouldn't get recommended for honors English/Reading in 9th grade because the "recommended" EXPLORE score was >22 (meaning, you needed a perfect score). There was another FAQ explaining that those were guidelines and yes, if Susie or Johnny were excellent students with lots of other good data, they'd still be recommended for the honors track in HS.
I didn't save my daughters' EXPLORE tests (they're 21 and 19 now, so it was a long time ago) but I do think that when you take it through district you get a very detailed report. When another ds took it through a local university (not a talent search, but offering gifted programming), we not only got his exact answers/scores, but we got a copy of his exam as well (the actual test booklet).