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Next week, Monday through Friday, we will be testing students in grades 3-8. Like many leading independent schools, BCD uses the CTP4 (Comprehensive Testing Program, version 4) distributed by the Educational Research Bureau (ERB).  You are likely to hear students and teachers refer to these simply as “the ERB’s.”

While we value the information these tests provide us about our students and our school, it’s important that we remember any standardized test is merely a snapshot – where a child is on one particular day at one particular time – and not an indication of his/her overall intelligence or chances for success.

Parents often have questions about standardizing testing. What are they? What do they measure? What kind of questions do they ask? How much time do they take? I’ve created the presentation below to try to address some of these questions and to provide general information about the CTP4 tests. Whether your child will be taking the “ERB’s” this year or not, it may be helpful for you to gain more information about this one small piece of the school’s comprehensive assessment and evaluation processes.

click the image to access presentation in Google Slides

There is no way to study for the ERB’s nor do you and your child need to prepare in any way. The most important thing you can do for your children next week is see that they get a good night’s sleep each night, have a good breakfast each morning, and arrive at school by 8:00 AM. Encourage them to do their best but DO NOT indicate to them that this is REALLY important. We hope students will put forth their best effort, but we do not want to put undo pressure on the children regarding these tests.

ERB will make the test results available to us in about 4-6 weeks. At that time, I’ll be arranging for another parent information session to explain the scoring process, the score reports, and how we can read and use the information they provide. Of course,  you are welcome to come in and talk to me about the ERB CTP4 any time between now and then as well!

Thank you for your support this next week.

Before the holidays, I posted the photo of the pile of presents collected during our annual gift drive. Then as now, I was overwhelmed with the engagement of our kids and the generosity of our families during this service project. We made quite a community impact as you will see from this letter I received in the mail today.

Thanks again to the Parents’ Association, the Student Council, Sarah Pitcher-Hoffman, the gift-givers, and everyone else who helped make some children’s holidays a little brighter!