The testing standard
The testing standard
It doesn’t affect grades. It doesn’t affect college admissions. So why do Marksmen take the ERB year in and year out?
Why do we take the ERBs?
Do they even matter?
Where do the results go?
From their second year on campus to their ninth, Marksmen take the ERB standardized test every year.
Every student is familiar with the test itself, but not many students know the true purpose of the exam.
The ERB, or CTP-5, achievement test is administered to thousands of students every year in independent schools across the nation. According to Academic Support Coordinator Julie Pechersky, who administers the exam, the ERB serves as a test to prepare students for future standardized tests.
“It gives students a chance to just experience that standardized testing environment,” Pechersky said. “It’s why we do it all the way through ninth grade, right up before 10th grade, when students take the PSAT.”
The school also administers the ERB to track student, class and departmental performance.
“It allows us to monitor achievement over time and look for any discrepancies or weaknesses,” Pechersky said. “It allows us to look at trends in terms of the school as a whole down to grade levels, and then even at a departmental level.”
However, the ERB is only one point on a student’s graph of performance; the school does not use one score to evaluate a student. Instead, they look for trends in a student’s work to identify strengths and weaknesses.
“For our purpose, it’s really to track students over time and have a kind of preventative measure if a student is struggling,” Pechersky said. “They are not getting grades, per se, for a while. So as early as third grade, we can start watching an individual student. We don’t use the scores to make any hard and fast decisions just based on those scores.”
ERB scores can be a useful tool when diagnosing learning disabilities as well and can be requested to serve as evidence for a test.
“An example of when it would be requested is if a student is having a psycho-educational evaluation, and they are trying to determine if there’s a learning disability or anything like that,” Pechersky said. “The more data you have over time is helpful.”
Students are also able to use ERB scores to see how they compare to other students in specific categories so they can identify any academic weaknesses that need improvement. Even the school as a whole can use the collective scores of the students to identify weaknesses and strengths.
“What the ERB allows us to do is see your achievement compared to national norms, your achievement compared to other independent school kids, and then also your achievement compared to your classmates,” Pechersky said.
Taking a few days away from regular classes and being tested on material in a new way can also give students a new perspective on certain topics and a new way to think of concepts covered in the classroom.
“Just getting outside practice of what you're learning in class ... That's certainly good just because you can understand more and apply that to other things,” seventh-grader Jimmy Francis said.
Compared to major standardized tests that factor into the college admissions process, the ERB is much less influential, so students should not be stressed about their performance while still trying their best.
“It's not like the SAT or ACT. It's not a high stakes test,” Counseling Director Barbara Van Drie said. “There may be kids who are anxious about it, and I think there are parents who might be anxious about it. They might transmit that to their children, but it's not really high stakes.”
Parents should not be telling their kids they have to do better on the ERB test, according to Van Drie. The purpose of the exam is simply to gain standardized testing experience and to identify curriculum weaknesses.
“That should never happen,” Van Drie said. “It’s like taking a snapshot of ‘How am I doing this year?’ It’s relative to last year, and ‘Am I still getting better?’ That’s it.”