READING There are two sections to the reading test: vocabulary and reading comprehension. In the vocabulary test, students will be asked to answer vocabulary questions that measure their understanding of the words from the general academic reading vocabulary. Each word appears in a short phrase that is intended to establish a frame of reference but does not give clues to the meaning of the word. This test will evaluate general word knowledge rather than understanding of specialized or technical vocabulary.
In the reading comprehension test, the student will be presented with a variety of materials. Content may include fiction, poetry, interviews, biographical sketches, a social studies topic, or a science topic. The questions will measure students' ability to answer questions in factual, interpretative, and evaluative comprehension. They may have to answer questions about main idea, author's purpose, the meaning of a word in context, and other types of comprehension questions.
LANGUAGE This test will be comprised of four short tests measuring spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and usage and expression. The spelling test will present the student with four word choices per item, only one of which is correctly spelled. The capitalization and punctuation tests will measure proper use of capitals and punctuation, ability to discern incorrect use of capitals and punctuation, and capitalization and punctuation measured in context. The usage and expression test will be in an edit-and-revise format that requires students to consider possible revisions to written drafts.
MATHEMATICS This test will have two sections: concepts and estimation and problem-solving/data interpretation.
The mathematics concepts test will require minimal computation, but will test the students' understanding of mathematical relationships and processes, such as number properties and operations, measurement, probability, and statistics. Estimation will be a separately timed test and measure a variety of estimation skills, such as rounding.
The emphasis of the problem-solving test will be on process, and it requires students to choose and apply various operational procedures and problem solving strategies. Data interpretation will present various data displays to the students. Students will be required to analyze and interpret the data, demonstrate their ability to read the information, compare the data, and determine trends and relationships.
ABILITY This test will assess general abstract reasoning ability. The items present novel tasks to students and offer an excellent appraisal of their ability to generalize a principle and apply it to a new situation. Thus, the items appraise how well students use their general reasoning skills to solve problems they have not been directly taught.