How to Interpret Your Child’s Test Scores

By Michelle Storie

So you just received your child’s State ELA or Math Assessment scores. Or your child just underwent a psychological evaluation and completed individually-administered norm-referenced tests. What do the scores mean?

How do you make sense of the information provided? And what do the test results tell you? How can they help your child? In this blog, we hope to answer the basics to these questions.
 
Standardized tests are norm-referenced tests. This means that the tests are given the same way to all children.  Evaluators follow rules for test administration and are not permitted to alter materials or reword questions. This allows you to compare your child’s score to that of other individuals his or her age who were part of the norming sample. When the tests are created, they are administered to groups of students of varying ages and the results are used to determine what was considered an Average score, a Below Average score, etc.  A standardized test allows you to draw a comparison between your child’s score and the scores of other individuals of the same age (or grade, if using grade-based scores).  

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