Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment ERB CTP results

We just received the results of our DS's first go with the ERB CTB 4 test. Great results....his school only utilized a comparison against the National Norm. They could have chosen to also compare against Suburban Public Schools and also Independent Schools...both of which would generally score higher than the National Norm. I have spent the last 2 hours trying to search for more information. Very little of what I am looking for has popped up. They convert raw scores to scaled scores...does anyone know what the maximum scaled scores are? Are they the same for each Test area? The test I am looking to compare is a Grade 4 Level 4. As an example, his scaled score for verbal reasoning is 399....percentile rank is 99, Stanine is 9...can anyone tell me what the percentile and stanine would be for the other two norms?

Do the PDFs on this page help?

http://erblearn.org/schools/collaboration/quality-assessment/norms-and-scoring

See, e.g., the table on p. 95 of the spring book.

One thing I was surprised by was where the bottom of the 99th percentile of the national norm matched up with the suburban and independent school norm. In math especially, the norms imply that 10-20% of the kids in independent schools would be in the top 1% nationally.

aaah, finally a response! Wow, a lot of information in that attachment. Very interesting to review...I am a little confused though, and perhaps because it is from 2011 the numbers may have changed somewhat. In one area, I am seeing ranges that make sense based on my our DS's scores...in another area, where they show raw scores converted to scaled scores, the max scaled score is less than his scores. Yes, the kids in both suburban and independent schools score higher, especially the independent schools, hence their percentiles are usually lower. Maybe somewhat along the lines of how the talent search scoring works (Explore)....99 percentile, at least with the CTP, is always figured on the top 4%. DS's scores for Level 4, grade 4 were as follows:
Verbal reasoning 399
Vocabulary 359
Reading Comp w/CR 420
Writing Mechanics 375
Writing Concepts&Skills 402
Quantiative reasoning 379
Mathmatics 1&2 w/CR 403

6 of the 7 areas generated a 99 percentile. I am assuming that is the maximum.
Vocabulary, which he did not finish and is generally a strong area, generated a 96 percentile. They do not calculate a composite score or percentile, although they may have that in an optional report. This was the first time his school (private) used this test...they went somewhat bare bones on the report, and used the national norms instead of the Independent school norms. The report is available with both. The administrator allowed me to have a quick glance at how he did vs the Independent norms, which I think were all mostly in the 90's, except vocabulary. I was really trying to find the conversion of scaled scores back to raw scores...ERB controls access very tightly to that info.

We were quite pleased with the results, especially after reading some prior posts...so far, DS has done well on a variety of test formats.

Thanks for the info!

I'm not in a position right now to take a look at the norms, but I will just mention that raw scores generally are not as informative as scaled scores, because they don't adjust for differences in forms, nor do they provide for continuous scaling across levels. The one situation where raw scores give some somewhat useful info is when they tell you that the child has hit the ceiling of the test. ( max raw score, eg)

Thanks for input...I understand. If you happen to know the max scaled scores and or the minimum scaled score for 99 percentile for the national norm that would help. Your insight on these things is always appreciated!