We'd like to advocate for a grade skip for DS5. Teacher recommends for, principal recommends against - but honestly we haven't all gotten together to talk about it more seriously. After seeing it mentioned several times here, I'd like to see what the Iowa scale would recommend. However, neither the school nor local libraries have the manual. I was thinking about ordering it from Amazon, but saw a comment about forms not being included.

Do I need to have the forms if I have a manual? Or conversely, do I need the manual if I have a form?

Manual = $50 on Amazon. Forms = $140 for 10 from Great Potential Press.

I was able to get the IAS (I believe with the forms) through our library. They had to go out of state to get a loaner copy and I could only have it for a brief amount of time, but I was able to look through it to determine if I wanted to push the subject of a skip with the school or not. I think the copy I was able to get on loan actually came from the University of Iowa, now that I think about it.

I say I believe it had the forms because I personally filled out a bunch of questions just to see where my opinion put our DD in terms of a skip. I don't know what other forms there would be besides what I filled out.

You might check with the library before you spend any money.

Also Great Potential Press offers the complete "kit" for $179.95.

For your personal use, the manual alone should be fine. It has pre-filled out sample forms in it. We just wrote in pencil our DDs answers on a sample form.

The school would need the real forms to do the official evaluation, but they may already have those.

Best of luck,
-S.F.

We went the same route as SFrog in that we got the book and typed up our own forms based on the example filled in ones. Unless you have no access to a pen and paper or a word processor you do not need the forms. Save yourself the money.

Thanks, everyone, for your responses. I will probably go ahead and buy the manual from Amazon. I already checked with the local library and not only did they say it would take a while to request and that I couldn't keep it for long (no renewals), but I would have to pay for postage or other fees. For some reason, there is only one within 300 miles of us on the interlibrary catalog.

The (purchased) forms must be coated in diamond dust or something - I don't know why they would cost so much, otherwise!

I think test forms are like ink cartridges. That's where they make all their money. I suppose there is a bit put into developing these tests. It's supposed to be a great resource though. Good luck with your decision

The manual we got via ILL had the form in it. It was fine.

Oh, this is good to know. I've been curious where DD would fall, but unable to find forms that were priced at "satisfy my curiosity" levels, lol.

I just had a form, which I got from some kind person who bought a set of forms and posted them here at $14/each or whatever cost at the time was. The forms had a description of every section, and we didn't really need more than that to convince the school. It was pure luck that someone here had extra forms. Maybe that will happen again!

(If you do decide to buy the forms, I imagine you could easily sell the ones you don't use here.)

Found this from a Davidson article -

I ordered the manual yesterday from Amazon, so it's too late for me to ask for the special deal from GPP. Thanks for the tip, though, frugalmom - hopefully it will be helpful to others. One thing to note is that the manual alone is ~$50 on Amazon vs ~$70 on the GPP website. Therefore, even if they would sell one form with the manual, I think it would still be quite a bit above the Amazon price for the manual alone.

Are you allowed to advertise things for sale here? Or even ask if anyone has something to sell? For some reason I didn't think you could (although I have not looked at the forum rules recently). Maybe I'll try to sell the manual after I'm done with it! Amazon does offer to buy it back for $24, which isn't bad.

By the way, I found out the following statement on http://accelerationinstitute.org/Resources/IAS.aspx :
"The proceeds from the purchase of the IAS are fully returned to Belin-Blank Center student and teacher programs. No authors of the IAS benefit financially from sales of the book." Guess that's a worthy cause to support!

I would guess that generally speaking, no one wants to turn this into a sales site, especially since most people here are anonymous posters, but it's not easy to get hold of single IAS forms so I was extremely grateful to have the chance to get one! Maybe if you just add something to this thread like "PM me if you're interested in the manual when I'm done," then it won't seem so seller-like. Really, this group is one of the few that actually knows what the IAS is.

And yes, Belin-Blank is a great cause to support!