Profile Narrative Report Interpretive Guidance

for Grade 6

Iowa Department of Education

This leaflet was designed for use by parents of Iowa students to provide interpretive

information about scores from the Iowa Tests. In particular, this information offers

assistance in determining the achievement level of a student in relation to the standards

adopted by the Iowa Department of Education for purposes of the No Child Left Behind

Act (NCLB). The law requires public school districts to report annually each student's

level of proficiency in reading comprehension and math to the parent or guardian.

The scores shown by the bar graph on the left side of the Profile Narrative Report are

labeled NPR, meaning National Percentile Rank. The NPR tells the percent of students in

the same grade who obtained lower scores than this student did when tested at the same

time of year. So if the NPR for Reading Comprehension is 48, for example, this means that

48% of the students in this same grade in the nation obtained lower scores.

For purposes of NCLB, the achievement of Iowa students is described in NPR score ranges

as Low, Intermediate, and High. Students with NPRs of 1-40 are in the Low level, those

with NPRs from 41 through 89 are in the Intermediate level, and those with values from

90 to 99 are in the High level. Each state is required to decide which levels of achievement

are considered proficient and less-than-proficient. In Iowa, the Low level as defined above

is "Less-than-Proficient" and the Intermediate and High levels together are regarded as

"Proficient".

To help the parent/guardian further clarify their student's achievement, the three

achievement levels are divided into six achievement ranges. For the Low achievement

level, students with NPRs of 1-9 are considered to be in the Weak range, followed by those

with NPRs of 10-40, who are considered to be in the Marginal range. For the Intermediate

level, those with values from 41-75 are in the Moderate range, and those with values from

76-89 are in the Skilled range. Finally, students with NPRs from 90-94 are considered

Accomplished, and those with NPRs from 95-99 are considered Distinguished.

The following pages contain the content expectations for each student for the Iowa Tests

at each grade level. This Content Summary is followed by the Performance Level

Descriptors for Reading and Mathematics for each grade level.