The Iowa Test of Basic Skills
Comment on your experiences with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS).
I personally would never recommend the IOWA test. Test administrators must have a bachelor’s degree. If you don’t have that, the publisher, Riverside Publishing, expects homeschools to arrange for testing with a school or agency approved by the publisher. I hear that they expect you to get permission from the Superintendent of your school district before you order their test. I’m not okay with this hoop they want us to jump through.
(Another perspective) Our family has conducted and used the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills for over ten years. We order it through a homeschool curriculum supplier. Yes, there are signatures needed to verify people aren’t using the tests for the wrong reasons, but there’s nothing too major about the whole thing. The test is intended to be conducted in the academic setting the student is most familiar with. Although it is expensive for us, I appreciate the uniform method of evaluation year-to-year. All we do is let the school district know when we inform them of our intent to homeschool in the fall that we will be using the Iowa Basic standardized test in the spring. There has never been an objection.