About Scantron

Students take Performance Series tests three times in the school year -- September, January, and May -- and parents receive an individual report on reading and math scores at the end of the school year.

Here's a link to the online Scantron guide for parents. Here is the guide in Spanish.

Here's a brief guide to Scantron terms:

Scaled Score – four digit score…

A grade-independent estimate of a student’s ability and expected level of performance.  This score should increase from year to year. 

District Average

The average score of students on a grade level in Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Washington.

Standard Item Pool (SIP)

A student's SIP score expresses the probability of a student correctly answering each question or problem within the student's grade.

National Percentile (NPR)

The percentage of students in the norm group above whom this students would score.    Example:  An NPR of 74 means that a student would be expected to score better than           74% of those who took the test.

Performance 

Performance bands are assigned based on the National Percentile Ranking.  Above Average refers to 76-99th percentile, High Average refers to 51-75th percentile, Low Average refers to 26-50th percentile, and Below Average refers to 1-25th percentile.

Unit Score Ranges (USR) and Standard of Measurement (SEM)

An independent estimate of ability based on responses for each unit within a subject. The USR includes the Standard Error Measurement (SEM). 

            Example: A USR measure of 2447-2563-2679 in Vocabulary means there's a strong chance that the student could score as low as 2447 or as high as 2679 in the same unit if the student were to take the test again.

 The SEM determines the range in which a student's score would probably fall in repeated test takings.

Gain 

The difference in Scaled Score points from fall to spring.

Lexile

A reading score that identifies a reader’s ability. Many books and texts are assigned numbers that align to the Lexile scale.

For more information on the Lexile scale and to locate appropriate reading materials visit the Lexile framework for Reading.

Here is a more in-depth guide to the Scantron Performance Series Assessments.