During the week of April 18, 2016, Tattnall Square Academy will join other independent schools, both locally and nationally, in implementing for the third year the ERB CTP4 Standardized Test as our achievement test. In 2013, this test replaced the Iowa Test of Basic Skills previously administered to students in grades 1-8.  Below are the reasons the school has moved to the CTP4.

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What is CTP?

The Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) is a rigorous assessment of student achievement of essential standards and learning domains for grades 1-11 in English language arts and mathematics. Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning tests are included for grades 3-11.

What is the ERB CTP4?
ERB (Educational Records Bureau) is a global educational services provider that produces achievement and admissions tests. The Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) is a rigorous assessment of student achievement of essential standards and learning domains for grades 1-11 in English language arts and mathematics. Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning tests are included for grades 3-11. The CTP4 test (Comprehensive Testing Program 4) is a favorite standardized test among independent schools.

Why do we have standardized tests at all?
The purpose of the CTP is twofold: to provide extra information about students in order to better meet their needs, and to ‘provide a reality check’ on the curriculum. Standardized test results are one piece of information that helps teachers and parents understand how well children are learning. To obtain an accurate picture of a student, standardized test results should be evaluated along with report cards, teacher’s observations and comments, and parental observations. Test results are only one piece of a broad picture.

Administrators, board members, teachers, and parents are also interested in measuring how well their school is educating students. Standardized tests help schools evaluate their performance.

What makes the CTP4 a good fit for Tattnall Square Academy?
The subtests that comprise the CTP 4 tests focus on the core curriculum of reading, writing, and math. Listening skills are also tested in younger students. The narrow focus of these subtests helps keep testing times short. Students will likely find the reading selections and content questions to be more challenging and interesting than those on other tests. Eighth grade math tests provide some integration with logic skills.

In addition, not only will we be able to compare our results with other public and private schools around the country, we will be able to specifically compare results with other independent schools through the use of the association norms scoring option.

What does the CTP measure?
All 10 levels of CTP include achievement tests that measure what a student has learned in the areas of reading and mathematics. Levels 1 and 2 also test word analysis and listening skills.
Beginning with level 3 (introduced in the spring of grade 3), there are tests that measure verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, certain kinds of writing skills, and vocabulary.

Tattnall Square Academy is committed to educational excellence.  As we continue to monitor your child’s progress, we know we must continue to monitor our instructional services as well. The faculty and administrators agree that the primary purpose of testing is to view the results as a baseline from which to gauge our existing curriculum.  As a college preparatory institution, we intend to stay ahead of the curve and not be satisfied with status quo. We want our students, your children, to not only be excellent but be exceptional.  The CTP4 will be used to inform our practices and guide the rigor of our programs.