Our Philosophy and Goals

At Crossroads, we truly believe this week is a time for our learners to “Show What They Know!” The Iowa Assessments™ measure our learners’ growth, and provide us with a Kindergarten through 12th grade overview of where our learners are based on their current grade levels.   We know that a standardized assessment is not the “end-all-be-all” of our learners’ knowledge and capability; and do not want to treat it as such.  However, we do want our learners to show up every day, prepared with their best effort. Our goal every year is to see growth in our learners, our facilitators, and our program. 

About the Iowa Assessments 

As part of our ACSI  and WASC Accreditations, we utilize the  Iowa Assessments™ to help determine how our learners are performing on nationwide standards. These assessments measure achievement in the following core content areas: Reading, English Language Arts, and Mathematics. The exact tests that each learner takes depend on his or her grade level.  

These assessments help our facilitators, the CDIAI Team, and our administration identify areas of strength and areas that may need additional emphasis.  It also measures learners’ growth and progress in the content areas assessed from year to year and may provide information about college readiness for older students. The assessments produce information that provides a focus for facilitators to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction and helps drive our instructional goals for the following year. 

For most assessments, learners read the questions and mark their answers by filling in a circle for each question.  Kindergarten – 2nd grade will have the tests fully or partially read aloud. All test questions are multiple choice, and each subtest lasts between 10 to 50 minutes.  These assessments are split up over the course of four days to shorten the amount of testing time each day.  Any learner absent on a day of assessments will make up those portions during the afternoon Tuesday- Thursday of testing week or on that Friday during the day. Any learner with an excessive amount of absences during testing week may not be able to make all of their missed testing sessions up. 

How your learner can prepare for test taking—and what you can do to help 

A learner who is well rested, well fed, and has a positive attitude about assessments is best prepared. Here are some tips to help your learner prepare for this week:

• Make sure that your learner is in school and on time on test days. Reschedule dentist or doctor’s appointments and other out-of-school time on non-testing days. 
• Make sure your learner gets a good night’s sleep and eats a healthy breakfast before each day of testing. 
• Remind your learner that these assessments are only one measure of what he or she has learned, and it is really a time to “show what they know.”  Emphasize that you have confidence in his or her ability to do the best job possible. 
• Remind your learner to listen to the directions and read each question carefully during their assessments. Encourage your learner to ask the facilitator for help if he or she does not understand the directions. 

Score reporting and how we use test results 

Crossroads Christian School will submit all tests for scoring to a third party.  The results will be made available to  families once they are received from the scoring agency. This typically happens by the end of the school year. These scores indicate how your learner performed on the assessments compared with students across the nation in that same grade.  If you have any questions regarding the  Iowa Assessments™, please contact the CDIAI Team at intervention@crossroadsschool.org.