There has been much written about a 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report that showed a significant drop in recent standardized test scores in the national K-8 results.
One must be careful when considering standardized test scores because these scores do not take into account factors, especially with young test takers, that may impact results. Children who become anxious during normal classroom testing sometimes do not perform as well on tests as they do on classroom activities. Some students may not be feeling well or lack focus on a particular day of the test. Specifically for Crossroads, these tests do not directly reflect aspects of the Crossroads curriculum. In other words, we do not “teach to the test.” The test scores also do not account for factors included in classroom work, such as motivation, preparation, study skills, and participation. However, standardized testing can provide a litmus test of how a large cohort of students is doing relative to their national peer groups.
Crossroads Academy partakes in the Comprehensive Testing Program (“CTP”), created and administered by the Educational Resource Bureau (“ERB”). You’ll hear community members and students refer to the tests as “ERBs.” In a 2006 correlation study, ERB scores correlated highly (.82) with the SAT scores in the Math, Quantitative Reasoning (.77) and Verbal Reasoning (.86) sections.
Crossroads’ ERB results continue to track above the national independent school (IN) results, and we are happy to say that the Crossroads results did not suffer the same recent dip as was reported in the NAEP report. In fact, even though we took a year off from administering the ERBs, our results continued to shine.
The ERB, starting in Grade 3, tests subset mastery in areas such as word analysis, reading comprehension, vocabulary, writing concepts and skills, verbal reasoning, mathematics, and quantitative reasoning. Our students consistently score above the national independent school norms in all categories, When we compare the 2018-2019 testing of these subset areas to the 2020-2021 testing of the same areas, we see a 11% increase in the percentage of students above the IN and a 2% decrease in the percentage of students below the IN. As students moved up in grades at Crossroads, the percentage of students above the IN rose. This is a very different story than the NAEP tells. Even during the pandemic and distance learning, Crossroads continued to help students excel in areas of mastery.
This data sets Crossroads apart from other schools in our region and in the nation and makes it clear that Crossroads Academy, as it has for over thirty years, continues to deliver on our commitment of academic excellence and rigor.
