Standardized Testing at Sts. Peter & Paul

At SSPP, we believe that standardized testing should be used to understand where a student is at in order to help reach his or her full potential in that subject matter. Additionally, standardized testing helps parents better understand their child's performance in relation to national norms. 

Beginning with the 2024-2025 school year, students in grades K-3 will be screened in the fall, winter, and spring using the FastBridge assessment suite. This assessment system allows for rapid identification of individual needs in reading and math, allowing teachers to tailor and design instruction around both individual and class-wide needs. Students requiring additional support will be quickly identified and assigned individualized tutoring, allowing for accelerated progress. As a result of this strategic screening and assessment, students at SSPP excel academically across all subject areas.

SSPP students perform well above national norms on our standardized testing, indicating strong preparation from our families, ongoing partnerships with families, and our school's commitment to excellence in all academic domains!

Iowa Assessment Information

Each year all students in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in grades 3 through 8 take the Iowa Tests.  These nationally standardized achievement tests are given in April and provide valuable information to our teachers about the effectiveness of our curriculum and instruction. SSPP uses Iowa testing data to review our core classes and ensure that students are learning and growing year-to-year. SSPP does not "teach to the test," but rather uses data to help us self-assess our curriculum and continuously grow the academic programs.

What are Iowa Assessments?

IOWA testing is done in English Language Arts, Math, Social Studies and Science.  They are achievement tests that are meant to assess a child’s knowledge of what they have learned in school and are not cognitive or IQ tests.  Students in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade receive the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT). This is an aptitude test which is intended to estimate students' learned reasoning and problem solving abilities through a battery of verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal test items.

How are Iowa tests different from PSSAs?

Iowa assessments are a norm-referenced test.  Scores on the Iowa Assessment can be compared with scores earned by a nationally representative sample of students who took the test (the norm group). The Iowa Assessment score that reflects this comparison is called a national percentile rank (NPR). If a student’s national percentile rank in Reading is 62, then the student scored as well as or higher on this subtest than 62% of his/her same-grade peers in the national norm group. The percentile ranks range from 1 to 99. The national average in all subtests is the 50th percentile.

PSSA assessments are criterion-referenced tests, as opposed to norm-referenced tests. Thus, your child will only compete against him or herself, rather than be compared against the group. The PSSA tests measure how well students have mastered the Pennsylvania Academic Content Standards and report student performance using the four levels:  Advanced, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic.

Sts. Peter & Paul students score well above their expected grade equivalence and the national norms. Data is monitored every year to ensure that a student is meeting their expected growth rate, thus keeping their individual performance advancing forward!

Saints Peter & Paul Iowa Test Results 

Iowa Spring 2024 Test Results
Grade Equivalence by Class-wide Averages