The actual test may be harder than the practice test, but our interest in the practice was to get used to the *format* of the exam. As for the content, we expected the actual test to challenge them, and told them to expect that. It was designed for 8th graders after all, and they were only 4th graders at the time.
As it turned out, dd found both the practice and actual test to be easy, and had time to spare for every section, both in the practice and actual exam.
Ds is our more erratic test taker - he had one subtest score on the EXPLORE that was not as high as the others and said he ran out of time on that section. A similar thing happened with his state testing, but it was a different subject area that came out lower on that one.
