My 10 yo son HG w dyslexia and dysgraphia is preparing to take the SSAT for private school admission. I am just having him take some practice tests. From my former life as a standardized test taker, I know the best way to study is to get practice tests that are as close to the actual test as possible, so I picked the study materials as carefully as I could. The thing is, his scores are sort of all over the place. The first test he took, the verbal score was in the 80% (which I gather is a pretty decent score for a 5th grader taking this test.) Two practice tests later, verbal score was in the 30%. (Which I gather is not so good.) I don't know quite what to make of this. I would expect the results to be more uniform. The way the scores are calculated on this test is pretty opaque, and there appears to be almost no info out there about what an acceptable score would be for a private day school. Are the scores flipping so much because of possibly poor quality of the test materials? Or is this a function of being 2e? Anyone out there with experience on the SSAT with a 2e kid?

Where are you getting the practice materials? I'm not familiar with preparation materials for the SSAT specifically, but there is a lot of variation in the way that these types of materials are prepared. Other things (like 2e) may play a role, but my first suspicion would be that you may have practice tests that aren't equivalent to each other.

Thanks, apm221. I suspect that may be the issue as well. I purchased practice materials online. There are so many sketchy looking providers. This website looked the most reputable, and they referenced that they tried hard to come up with practice tests that are close to the actual one. I used to teach Princeton Review SAT review classes, and I remember realizing how much it matters to use actual tests whenever possible.