The Iowa Tests of Educational Development (ITED) are a set of standardized tests given annually to

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

students in many schools in the United States, covering Grades 9 to 12. The tests were created by the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 col ...

College of Education In the United States and Canada, a school of education (or college of education; ed school) is a division within a university that is devoted to scholarship in the field of education, which is an interdisciplinary branch of the social sciences en ...

in 1942, as part of a program to develop a series of nationally accepted standardized achievement tests. The primary goal of the ITED is to provide information to assist educators in improving teaching.https://web.archive.org/web/20110506042222/http://www.education.uiowa.edu/itp/ited/Default.aspx ITED: Iowa Tests of Educational Development”. University of Iowa.

Goals of the ITED

Rather than testing a student's content knowledge, the ITED endeavors to evaluate students' skills in a variety of areas, especially based on problem solving and critical analysis of texts. These are considered by the authors of the ITED to be skills acquired across multiple curricular areas and skills that are important for academic success.https://web.archive.org/web/20110102221715/http://www.education.uiowa.edu/itp/ited/ited_about_prp.aspx ”Purposes – About the Tests – ITED: Iowa Tests of Educational Development” University of Iowa. Within the skill areas evaluated by the ITED, the test is designed to elicit information about a student's current skill level, growth and abilities within each area tested. The ITED is designed to examine and compare a student's ability in several educational fields, including vocabulary, reading comprehension, language, spelling, mathematical concepts and problem solving, computation, analysis of social studies materials, analysis of science materials, and use of sources. Although the test is broken up into these fields, the goal of the ITED is to track the development of the skills and analysis needed in each of these areas rather than the content.

ITED Sections

Vocabulary

The

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

section of the ITED focuses on testing the development of students' vocabulary for everyday communication.https://web.archive.org/web/20110102221714/http://www.education.uiowa.edu/itp/ited/ited_about_desc.aspx “Description – About the Tests – ITED: Iowa Tests of Educational Development”. University of Iowa. Retrieved 2009-09-07.http://www.riverpub.com/products/ited/details.html “Riverside Publishing - Iowa Tests of Educational Development (ITED) Details”. Riverside Publishing. Retrieved 2009-09-07.

Reading Comprehension

The reading comprehension section of the ITED tests literal understanding as well as the higher-level skills of inference and analysis.

Language: Revising Written Materials

The

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

section of the ITED focuses on students' ability to revise and edit texts, include issues of style and clarity as well as grammatical errors.

Spelling

The ITED

spelling Spelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form. In other words, spelling is the rendering of speech sound (phoneme) into writing (grapheme). Spelling is one ...

test presents students with groups of words; students must indicate which word is misspelled or whether they are all spelled correctly.

Mathematics: Concepts and Problem Solving

This section focuses on problem solving and

logical thinking Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

skills rather than mathematical computation. Some questions require basic computation while others require students to determine the steps necessary to solve a problem without actually completing the problem itself.

Analysis of Social Studies Materials

This ITED section requires students to analyze information presented to them and will often contain documents including

map A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

s, graphs and reading passages.

Analysis of Science Materials

The science materials section of the ITED evaluates students' familiarity and comfort with scientific procedures and their ability to understand and analyze scientific information and methods.

Sources of Information

The sources of information section tests students' ability to do research and to use the resources available to them to find information.

Uses of the ITED

The ITED is used in the majority of schools in the state of

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to th ...

, both in the

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and

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sectors, and the tests have found some use in other regions of the United States. The ITED is administered in the fall Ansley, Timothy N. Forsyth; Robert A (1990). “An Investigation of the Nature of the Interaction of Reading and Computational Abilities in Solving Mathematics Word Problems”. Applied Measurement in Education 3(5), 319-330.Shymansky, James A.; Enger, Sandra; Chidsey, Jennifer L.; Yore, Larry D; et al. (1997). “Performance Assessment in Science as a Tool to Enhance the Picture of Student Learning”. School Science and Mathematics, 97(4), 172-183. and results are used along with classroom observation and student work by teachers to evaluate the progress of a student's abilities. The ITED results are also used by the state of Iowa to monitor schools' progress and determine if schools and students are meeting goals.http://www.greatschools.net/students/local-facts-resources/testing-in-IA.gs?content=463 “Testing in Iowa: An Overview”. GreatSchools.net. Retrieved 2009-09-07. Individual student ITED results are used to help determine placements and tracks. The ITED helps educators and students plan student schedules by providing information for the school to use in placing students in classes of varying levels of difficulty. The results also provide information about students' academic potential, assisting students and school advisors as they make their high school course selections and plan for college.Qualls, Audrey L.; Ansley, Timothy N (1995). “The Predictive Relationship of ITBS and ITED to Measures of Academic Success”. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 55, 485-98. The ITED is scored based on the number of questions a student answered correctly.von Schrader, Sarah; Ansley, Timothy (2006). “Sex Differences in the Tendency to Omit Items on Multiple-Choice Tests: 1980-2000”. Applied Measurement in Education, 19(1), 41-65. Research has indicated that there is a correlation between ITED scores and student grade point averages (GPAs), although these correlations were lower than expected and lower than indicated by prior research.

References

External links

Iowa Testing Programs

Utah State Office Of Education: Assessment & Accountability - The IOWA Tests

* ttp://www.greatschools.net/students/local-facts-resources/testing-in-IA.gs?content=463 Testing in Iowa: An Overview {{DEFAULTSORT:Iowa Tests Of Educational Development Tests of Educational Development, Iowa Standardized tests in the United States Achievement tests