@jym626 you’re spot on what I’m after, i.e., aptitude and interest (AI) tests. But why is it too early to do an AI testing in middle school? I know it’s too early to do SAT etc which are not aptitude tests anyway.
Some posters thought I was thinking about colleges. Not at all. If a student fully develops his/her potentials in K-12, the right colleges will present themselves, with the standard tests taken without much prep I hope.
It’s possible that the kind of short AI tests I’m looking for are not readily available.
It seems what many posters above say is that he'll show what his A/B/C/Ds are in the next few years. I'm trying to know in advance his A/B/C/Ds on a finer scale with some shorter tests if exist.
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Why? What do you want to do with this information? Is it going to guide in you choosing classes for him? Extracurriculars?
Are you serious? There is no way to know “in advance his A/B/C/Ds on a finer scale”. You can’t preview your child’s life. It just unfolds, much like everyone’s lives. He and you will learn what he likes, his strengths and weaknesses through, well, his classes and other experiences in school. And it’s not always a given where he will excel or thrive. He may get a fantastic teacher who inspires students to a particular subject or field. But you won’t know that now through any test.
When my son was young, he had to undergo a battery of aptitude/intelligence/achievement tests but we suspected a learning disability. I wouldn’t have subjected him to these tests otherwise.
The PSAT, SAT, and ACT are end-of-the-line tests that students take just before college. The SSAT is taken by seventh- and eighth-graders contemplating boarding or other highly selecting private schools.
A sixth- or seventh-grade student absolutely should take tests such as the Iowa test, to determine which math track is best. They have pretty good statistics that 95 percent of students who score X will pass seventh-grade algebra, for example, and they also know that students who score below a certain point will have little chance of passing. So don’t be afraid of testing; you are not “subjecting” your child to anything. The tests take a few hours.
Test scores on the ACT and SAT can be improved with test prep. But few kids will “prep” for the eighth-grade Explore test, for example. It’s always a good idea to get a good idea of where your child stands in relation to others so that you, as a parent, can help set reasonable but attainable goals.
Don’t be afraid of testing. Tests can be your friends.
“Are you serious? There is no way to know “in advance his A/B/C/Ds on a finer scale”. You can’t preview your child’s life. It just unfolds, much like everyone’s lives. He and you will learn what he likes, his strengths and weaknesses through, well, his classes and other experiences in school. And it’s not always a given where he will excel or thrive. He may get a fantastic teacher who inspires students to a particular subject or field. But you won’t know that now through any test.”
Eiholi, do you come from a cultural background where people are tracked into certain career paths at any early age? That may explain your thinking. Here, we just let it unfold. Maybe your kid who likes field A in middle school starts to like B in high school and then in college he learns about field C. He takes a starter job and discovers that he really likes D. Five years down the pike, he specializes in E.
I agree completely with SlackerMom. The jobs / careers that today’s middle schoolers will ultimately inhabit haven’t even yet been invented. There is simply no need to constrict. Just keep on doing what any sensible parent does - support a love of learning. Don’t pretend that just because today he loves dinosaurs that means he’s a budding paleontologist or that the fact that tomorrow he writes for the student newspaper means that he’s destined to be a journalist. Don’t read so much into it.
My kids took aptitude tests in middle school. They always seemed to come up with completely ridiculous suggestions. My kids swore they answered the questions truthfully. I think my youngest was supposed to be a weatherman, and my oldest something that was completely unrelated to computers which by then it was already clear was his direction. (My youngest majored in International Relations, did some work with NGOs and now is planning on being an officer in the Navy. Oldest is at Google.)
The Iowa Test is an academic assessment on a finer scale, with detailed results for the covered students and their parents, but unfortunately our school is not among them.
What to do with the results of aptitude and interest tests? To be an informed parent at the least. I don’t plan to pay for any out of school test. Maybe school counselors have more details but I’ve never met one yet. It’s time.
I can say when my classmates and I took these tests in eighth grade (in the 70’s) and received the results, we had a good time giggling, if not guffawing, over what the testing company said about our interests with regards to our test scores. I don’t even know if I gave the test results to my parents. Maybe if they needed a laugh that day.
Kids who wanted performing arts were all discouraged and told to follow a more traditional path (accounting?). I was told I would make a great physician because I liked biology.
Maybe the tests have gotten more sophisticated in the last 40 years (I hope so) but middle school kids generally haven’t in terms of what they want to do.
Having gone to Catholic school and being subjected to the Iowas every year, I can tell you that they were all pretty much viewed as useless. I don’t think they were helpful for any of us or our teachers.
It is way too soon… plus look into your district requirements. Depending on the state you live in he may be taking either the ACT or the SAT as part of graduation requirements and if that’s the case you can always go with the one and done approach. Most kids will take it twice anyway, but there is nothing stopping a student from taking the state test and nothing else. Also many students have lopsided scores because they have strengths and weaknesses. This is not unusual.
If you can dig out your years of Iowa scores, maybe you can see patterns of the 21 numbers over the years and their link to your SAT/GRE language scores.
I thought the Iowa tests and all the other testing (Stanford, was there a California test? I remember tests named after states) I had to take in elementary and junior high schools prepared me for more standardized testing in high school (years of bubbling in circles precisely) but other than that they were useless.
I mentioned the Iowa. It can be very helping in deciding whether to encourage a child to get on a fast, intermediate, or regular math track, and other decisions.
I agree with the other posts here that standardized tests + school grades should give you an idea of strength and weaknesses. Our state reports cover various subscores within each subject, and have been quite helpful for us.
However, if your child is already in the high 90th percentiles in the state mandated tests, you can try the following:
You could download a sample ACT test from the ACT website, and give your kid the 35 minute reading test, and then compare the score with the percentile for GT 7th graders using the following document from Duke TIP: https://tip.duke.edu/downloads/ts/7/summary.pdf
Repeat with the math portion. This will give you a deeper comparison among high performing students in middle school.