Website design By BotEap.comSome performance test scores are less meaningful than others to parent educators and classroom teachers. The normal curve equivalent, commonly known as the NCE score, falls into this category.

Website design By BotEap.comIf a score is meaningless, it is often useless and is also considered irrelevant. However, because NCEs are part of most performance test reports, here are two things to know about this score.

Website design By BotEap.comFirst, NCEs are similar to percentile ranks in that they rank your student’s score from 1 (low) to 99 (high). If you look at the sample report on our website, you will see that the NCE scores follow the NP scores when looking at the report from left to right. The NCE score for the Total score in our sample report it is 50. Reaching an NCE of 50 is the only time the percentile score and this score are the same. When percentile rank scores are greater than 50, NCE scores will always be lower. The NCE score for idiom in the sample report illustrates this. When the percentile ranks are less than 50, the NCE scores will be higher. The NCE scores for Reading Y Math in the sample report illustrates this.

Website design By BotEap.comSecond, NCE scores allow for “meaningful” comparisons (mainly significant for statisticians) between different performance test batteries and between different tests within the same battery. How this works is complicated, and I won’t go into it here.

Website design By BotEap.comIn the column to the right of the NCE scores are the stanin scores. The name of this score comes from the fact that it rates student performance on a standard scale from 1 (low) to 9 (high). A Stanine score of 5 falls in the middle of this scale and in our sample report corresponds to a percentile rank of 50, indicating that a student’s performance falls in the average range. Similarly, a Stanine score of 4 is associated with a slightly below-average percentile rank, as we see for Reading subtest A Stanine score of 6 is linked to a slightly above-average percentile rank, as we see for idiom subtest

Website design By BotEap.comThe value of stanine comes from the fact that because it is expressed as a single-digit number, it is easy to draw quick conclusions about a student’s performance. Stanine of 1 or 2 suggests that a student had problems with the content of the test. Stanine of 8 or 9 suggests a high degree of mastery of the concepts covered. However, keep in mind that statin levels are less precise than percentile ranks.

Website design By BotEap.comThank you for reading,

Website design By BotEap.comCurt Bucrot, M.R.E.

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