Some Littleton Public Schools (LPS) officials have complained that the ITBS/CogAT tests take "too much test time" (but the truth is that less than 2% of class time has been used for actual administration of all districtwide tests, including ITBS/CogAT; for example, the ITBS complete battery takes less than six hours total for all six principal subtests).  Practice time, if any, is a school-based decision; of course, many LPS parents get the impression of "so much testing" due to having the subtests spread out over weeks rather than a few days.  ICAN believes that little, if any, special "practice" time (some would call this time "teaching") should be needed for students who already have mastered the curriculum to be tested.

At the January 14, 2004 Board of Education work session on the 2004-2005 budget, the administration proposed that there be a "moratorium" on ITBS/CogAT testing.  ICAN considered that proposal as another "shoot-the-messenger" reaction to the objective evidence of the increasing percentage of below-grade-level ITBS/CogAT performance of students who are being left behind.

LPS officials used to refer to the ITBS grade-equivalent (GE) predicted scores (based upon the relevant CogAT scores) as the "potential" scores for the ITBS/CogAT tests.  Of course, half of the students in the national-average norms had "obtained" GE scores above the "predicted" GE scores (and the other half of those students were below the norm average).   Therefore, the use of "potential" (as an upper-limit possibility) for "predicted" is ridiculous since there is a 50% likelihood of exceeding that limit.

Groups of LPS students with "obtained" GE scores below grade level are about twice as likely as the other groups to have "obtained" GE scores below their "predicted" GE scores.  That suggests that the former groups are less successful in getting the help they need.

The district has made the following claim (in the LPS Back to School Guide, August 2004, page 14): "Used in conjunction with the ITBS, the CogAT provides another valuable layer of information comparing what students are capable of achieving with what they actually achieved on the tests."  How can "capability" be exceeded?

LPS has used the ITBS/CogAT tests for grades 3, 5, and 7.  Littleton Academy charter school, by far the highest-performing school in the district, tests grades 1-8 ("what gets measured gets done"). 

LPS has done ITBS/CogAT testing in November for the past four years, whereas Littleton Academy tests in April.  End-of-year testing is more useful as an accountability measurement of student learning during the school year.

LPS does not publish any building-level ITBS/CogAT data on the district website for the convenience of community members, who get only some previous-year data in the LPS Annual Report almost 12 months after the administration receives the test results.  ICAN objects to that failure of LPS administration to make ITBS/CogAT data promptly and easily accessible to taxpayers.

The LPS District Assessment Needs Committee presented some large-scale assessment recommendations for discussion at the April 12, 2005 regular meeting of the LPS Board of Education (and action at the April 28 meeting).  ITBS testing will be discontinued, and CogAT testing will be for grades 3 and 6.  The ITBS testing is included in a "Summative Achievement Assessments" format [PDF 103KB] that indicates (by color code) how well that type of testing meets the proposed large-scale assessment needs.

Last modified: 04/21/2005

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