Mandatory standardized testing is being increasingly required by states across our country as a means of determining the quality of educational service provided by schools to their students. In theory, this concept makes a lot of sense but the validity of the process is highly dependent on appropriate interpretation of test results. In fact, many individuals have inappropriately attacked the value of standardized testing, when they were actually only dissatisfied with the manner in which test data were used. 

The State of West Virginia requires the administration of the Terra Nova, a nationally utilized, norm-referenced test, to its pupils. Terra Nova results order a student's test performance among the student's same aged peers who also took the test (about 2 million students for each age each year). This placement has been of traditional interest to parents, but does not really provide much information about educational quality. Brighter students score higher regardless of the quality of educational service received. Schools typically report their all tests average for all students in that school. Theoretically, this average should be around 50, assuming the school has a normal proportion of bright, average and less bright students. Unfortunately, this average is basically uninterpretable when the population of students at a school taking the test is not normally distributed relevant to intellectual ability. If a private school has a selection policy geared toward admitting brighter students, the school's test average provides information only about the brightness of the school's students and not about the educational quality of that school. Additionally, a school's test average can also be inflated and thus, made uninterpretable, by systematically eliminating less bright students at the school from the testing pool. The only Terra Nova data, which are truly indicatives of the quality of educational service students received at a given school, is the all tests/all students average annual change calculation. Here all students' changes on all tests taken from one year to the next are utilized. This result indicates whether the average student at that school moved ahead of their same aged peers during that year due to the quality educational service received. Annual test gains indicate educational service superior to that of those students passed in the norm-referenced placements. Annual test losses indicate exactly the opposite. 

Locally, only Morgantown Learning Academy elects to provide parents with this type of annual test change data. If you desire to determine the quality of educational service that your child is receiving, begin by comparing schools' all tests/all students' average annual change average. As always, the choice is yours.