Your score report contains a lot of information. Here’s how to understand it.
Score
A student’s score is based on the scoring metric for actual exams. Some exams have multiple scores, such as the ISEE, which gives a percentage, a scaled score, and a stanine (1-9) score. We list the score that schools use for admission. For the ISEE, this means the stanine score.
Scoring curves change yearly, so no test can claim that their scoring is 100% correct. That said, we believe that our scoring is as accurate as possible.
A “good score” depends on where you want to go to school. Check online to see the average incoming score for the school you want to attend and use that to determine if your score is acceptable.
Summary
Overall Test Readiness
Overall test readiness (OTR) is a combination of different categories mixed with a student’s score and their performance on specific levels of difficulty. Understand that this is a general measure and may not coincide with your or your child’s expectations. The target score that your child entered at the beginning of the exam factors heavily into this metric.
An OTR of 75% is very good, but it’s possible for a student to hit their target score with an OTR below that.
Grit
Grit measures a student’s willingness to work through difficulty to find the right answer. Questions that are both difficult and require more than two steps are classified as grit questions. An example of a grit question is below:
The width of a rectangle is increased by 20 percent and its length is decreased by x percent. If these changes decreased the area of the rectangle by 16 percent, what is the value of x?
(A) 12
(B) 30
(C) 32
(D) 36
As you can see, this isn’t a question that can be answered quickly. Students must put in the work to find the correct answer, which is (B).
There are questions designated as grit on every subject of the exam. A student’s score is the percentage of these questions they answered correctly. As these are usually the most difficult questions on the exam, 70% or higher is a very good grit score.
Time Awareness
Time awareness is a combination of different factors: did the student finish the section? How much time did they spend on the first 80% of questions versus the last 20%? Did they spend more than 3 minutes on a question before they finished every other question? A time awareness score above 75% is good.
Vertical Fluidity
Vertical fluidity measures how often students reread reading comprehension passages when answering questions. This is a crucial component of doing well on reading comprehension and one that many students just don’t do. Keep in mind, however, that students won’t need to reread the passage for every question, so a vertical fluidity score at or above 70% is good.
Of course, what matters most is how a student performed on the reading section. If a student did very well on the section, but their vertical fluidity score is low, it is not a problem.
Test Equanimity
Test equanimity measures how students recover after struggling on a question. It also factors in recovery time after a pulse rate spikes (if it spikes). A test equanimity score over 70% is good.
Performance by Level of Difficulty
This metric shows how a student performed on questions at different levels of difficulty. Test questions are scaled from 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest). To obtain these rankings, we use a modified version of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Difficulty, reinforced by the percentage of students who have answered this question correctly when taking the exam.
Performance by Subject
This score shows how a student performed on each general topic, such as math or reading. Keep in mind that standardized tests are much more difficult than school exams, and the percentages should not be equal. A 70% on a school exam means a student needs to improve considerably. A 70% on a standardized test can be a good score, depending on the test and the subject.
Performance by Topic
This score shows how a student performed on specific topics within a section, such as verb tense, triangles or science reading comprehension. Sometimes, a test will contain only one or two questions of a specific topic, so a 0% or a 50% doesn’t necessarily mean a student is horrible on that topic. It’s best to go over the exam to see which questions caused the most trouble.
Three terms in this section are not self-explanatory. The first is grit, which is explained above. The second is transference, which is a student’s ability to transfer their knowledge to new types of questions they most likely haven’t seen in school. An example follows:
A circle has a radius of 2/ feet. How far does the circle have to roll to make five full rotations?
(A) 10 feet
(B) 20 feet
(C) 10 feet
(D) 20 feet
Most students have studied circles in school, but few have seen a question like this. To solve, students must be able to transfer their knowledge of circles to determine that a circle will roll its circumference in one full revolution. The answer to this question is (B).
The second term that’s not self-explanatory is close reading. Certain questions require students to read closely. Attention to detail measures a student’s performance on these questions. An example is below:
Find the smallest even number that satisfies the equation. Newark High School needs to hire photographers to take portraits of the senior class. Each photographer can take 15 portraits an hour and work for 5 hours straight. After 5 hours, they need a 1-hour break and can then work for 2 more hours. If there are 250 students in the senior class, how many photographers must they hire to finish taking all senior portraits in one day?
A) 2
B) 3
C) 4
D) 5
It’s very easy, by the time you finish your work on this question, to forget what it says in the first sentence. The smallest number that satisfies the equation is 3. The smallest even number is 4.
Chart
This report shows your child’s pulse and blink rate. It also shows every time a student selected an answer and every time they moved to a new screen (the test shows one question or passage per screen).
You can isolate a specific time period of your chart. Move your cursor to the beginning of the time period you want to isolate, click your mouse or track pad and move to the end of the time period you want to isolate, then release the mouse/track pad. The chart will zoom in on that period.
The screen markings are useful to see how quickly students moved through questions and if they went back to check their work at the end of a section. For example, if the last answer was made with 3 minutes left, but then the student went to five screens after that, chances are they were checking their work.
The best way to use the chart is to look for changes and cross-reference them with the questions asked. For instance, if pulse rate jumped at 3:15, see which question your child was working on at this time (scroll over the red or green circle for this information).
Timing
This shows the total time a student spent on each question and on each reading passage. In the last column, we list the average time of all students for this question or passage.
Keep in mind that timing shows the total time spent on a question. If a student looked at a question four times, each time for 10 seconds, the timing for the question will be 40 seconds.
Eye Tracking
This report lets you see if your child is re-reading passages when answering questions on the reading comprehension section. Going back to re-read passages is crucial for doing well on the reading comprehension section, and a lot of students don’t do it. We’ve found that a number of students reread passages during practice or when working with a tutor, but don’t reread passages on an exam. Now we can know for certain.
Answer Key
The answer key shows a student’s answer and the correct answer for each question. If a student answered a question incorrectly, you’ll see the answer they chose. If they answered a question correctly, you’ll see a +.
Underneath each question is a blue circle with an i inside. Clicking on this will bring up the video explanation for that question.
Final Thoughts
Keep in mind that performance can fluctuate depending on how a student is feeling, what they ate before the exam and how they slept the night before. Be careful of reading too much into one test, especially if it’s the first test a student has taken. We suggest multiple exams to get a more accurate reading of what a student most needs to improve.
To your child’s success!