The main purpose of using a standardized achievement battery is to provide information that can be used to improve instruction. The information from the battery is unique in that it is not available from other sources. It is valuable to the extent that it contributes to better instructional decisions than educators could make without having that information available. Though standardized achievement scores cannot and should not replace teacher observations and classroom assessment information, they can provide unique supplementary information that bears on decisions about selecting learning objectives and procedures, designing or choosing instructional materials, and creating an effective learning environment.
The development of academic skills is a continuous process. But the rate of skills development differs widely among children of the same age or grade. Some students learn rapidly. Others, who may be as conscientious and highly motivated, learn more slowly. Most children are more proficient in some skills than in others. Some students progress more rapidly with certain methods, materials, and teaching styles than with others. It is the challenge of identifying and providing the optimal conditions for learning, which vary from child to child, that helps make teaching such an exciting profession. Tests that can provide dependable information about each student's most developed and least developed skills will help the teacher to meet this challenge.
Some of the specific purposes that the Levels 9-14 batteries were designed to serve are:
1. To help teachers determine the extent to which individual students in their classes have the knowledge and skills needed to deal successfully with the academic aspects of the instructional program the teachers have planned.
2. To estimate the general developmental level of students so that teachers may adapt materials and instructional procedures to meet individual needs.
3. To identify each student's areas of greatest and least development for use in planning individual instructional goals and approaches.
4. To provide achievement information that makes it possible to monitor year-to-year developmental changes.
5. To provide information for making administrative programming decisions that will accommodate developmental differences.
6. To identify areas of relative strength and weakness in the performances of groups (e.g., classes), which may have implications for curriculum change -- either in content or emphasis -- as well as for change in instructional procedures.
7. To provide a basis for reports to parents that will enable home and school to work together in the students' best interests.
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