ISAT
As some of you know, my children attend a private school here in Peoria. At a recent parent/teacher conference we were shown our child’s Iowa Standardized tests results. A teacher briefly stated that they use Iowa’s because it mirror’s ISAT the closest and should be viewed in conjunction with the report card and other factors to gain a better understanding of how your child is doing in the core subjects of math, science, reading, etc.
ISAT? Illinois Standards Achievement Test. Why not simply use the Illinois test? It’s only available for public schools.
Iowa’s tests are not only used in their public school system, but are available for purchase for private schools in Iowa and across the nation. Here in the State of Illinois and from what I can gather, many other states, the public schools keep their federally mandated testing programs close to their chest so as to not allow their results to be directly comparable to a private school.
I understand that the playing field is not exactly equal between public and private schools, but wouldn’t it be nice to know how all schools stacked up against each other? Obviously proponents of the public school system don’t think so.
November 10th, 2008 at 3:48 am
My children used to attend a private school many years ago. I never understood why the school did not administer the ISAT. Now I do. That seems to be something that really needs changed in Illinois. You seem to imply that public schools are afraid of the competion and that my well be. My concern, at the time, was whether my private school was instructing as good or better than the public school and wanted some type of comparable.