One of our schools that refused to test with AT did curriculum based assessments and those were awesome because it found out where the kid needed to be in that school with that curriculum.
Since each school is different, curriculum based assessments are the ideal way to go. These kinds of tests also help find out what the child needs to learn. I have often joked that the tests for math should be given with an adult looking over the child's shoulder. DS was 'way' over placed once in Math because he 'intuited' long division (it's actually called the forgiving method)- which was fine for a short test, but didn't serve him when he had to do many problems over and over in a limited time. Still I think that curriculum based assessments are wonderful. I wish that all schools had them for all grade levels at their fingertips for easy assessment of a child's readiness level.
Smiles,
Grinity
