Do you know?
- How well are your students progressing, aside from what you see in their report cards?
- How does your school’s performance compare to other Amish and Mennonite schools?
- How much is each student is progressing from year to year?
- How effective are your teaching methods and curriculum?
- Do you have test records to validate your teaching program?
Achievement tests provide…
... a measure independent of teachers and report cards.
Classroom tests, report cards, and teacher observations are all valuable tools to see how your students are doing. However, they vary from year to year and classroom to classroom. Achievement tests are an impartial measure independent of teachers and curriculum.
...comparisons with public schools and current Amish and Mennonite schools.
See your school in a broader context. Are the fifth graders’ English scores lagging behind other Anabaptist schools? By how much?
Catforms provides comparisons using the original 1970 public school norms. More importantly perhaps, Catforms alone uses norms based on tens of thousands of tests from current Amish, Mennonite, and other Conservative Anabaptist (Plain) groups.
...an annual record of growth for students, classes, and the whole school.
Has Susan’s reading comprehension improved? What has her spelling been like over the years? How are the seventh graders doing in math story problems? Better than last year? How well do the school’s comprehension scores compare with the five year average?
...a tool to evaluate teaching and curriculum.
You need an outside measure to see if your teaching program is really working. We also have curriculum surveys based on test results to help with your curriculum decisions.
...records to document your school's effectiveness.
There have been legal challenges to Amish and Mennonite schools in the past, and voluntary use of achievement tests played a role in resolving conflict in several instances. More information is available on our website.
Good record-keeping is evidence that we are serious about the quality of our education. Consistent achievement test records are one way we can document that.