Re: Converting scores to national percentiles

[aburke5054@aol.com]

 "National percentiles" are statistics calculated on a (presumably) nationally-representative group of students. You should be able to find the percentage of students who score at each level of the New York tests. So if a child's national percentiles in reading and math are way below the cumulative percentages for scores of 4, your ballpark estimate is that the child is not at the 4 level on the NY tests.     

Art


-----Original Message-----
From: ElsaHaas <ElsaHaas@si.rr.com>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Tue, Jul 13, 2010 9:28 am
Subject: [arn-l] Converting scores to national percentiles


New York State has a Mathematics test and an English Language Arts test for

the public schools. Each test gives the kid a score between 1 and 4, with 4

being the highest score. 



 



How can I find out roughly what those scores are equivalent to in terms of

national percentiles? 



 



I realize that this will vary from year to year and that it's controversial

and political - I just want to get a rough idea.  



 



The reason I'm asking this is that sometimes parents who have been

homeschooling want to know what their kids' national percentile scores on

tests like the CAT (we homeschoolers get to choose from a list of approved

tests, and one of them is an old version of the CAT) can tell them about the

likelihood of the kid's getting into, for example, a sixth-grade gifted

program that requires a 4 in both English and Math on the NYS tests. I just

tell them, "It's complicated." 



 



Any pointers?



 



Thanks, 



Elsa