IPT Proficiency Level scores also provide helpful information for guiding student placement into instructional programs for proficiency-based language instruction. The proficiency levels correspond to the levels offered in Ballard & Tighe’s Carousel of IDEAS, Fourth Edition (K-5) and Champion of IDEAS (6-12) programs, and other instructional programs may offer similar groupings of students into roughly five levels. As a general rule, if the student’s IPT Proficiency Levels for oral, reading, and writing skills are different, it is worth paying attention to the reading and writing levels whenever fine-grained placement options are available. If only two or three levels of support are available, the instructions for deriving the Non-, Limited, and Fluent designations may offer the most useful guidelines. For example, the table found in Section 6.6 of the IPT I– Oral English, Forms G & H Examiner’s Manual shows the placement recommendations for each IPT Proficiency Level in terms of the Carousel of IDEAS program. The table found in Section 6.6 of the IPT II–Oral English, Forms E & F Examiner’s Manual shows the placement recommendations for each IPT Proficiency Level in terms of the Champion of IDEAS program.
When placing students into appropriate proficiency levels in ELD programs, it is important to keep the following key points in mind:
- Decisions on student placement should be based on multiple criteria whenever possible. Importantly, the IPT Oral Tests do not assess the student’s literacy skills. In many cases, a student’s literacy skills may be lower than his or her oral skills. We recommend using one of the IPT Oral Tests together with an appropriate IPT Reading & Writing Test for a comprehensive picture of a student’s skills.
- Sometimes students who achieve very high scores on the IPT are nevertheless placed in an ELD program on the basis of other pertinent information about their level of proficiency in English. In such cases, the recommendation from the IPT Oral English Test is to place the student with other high-proficiency students, and at a level that assumes reasonable control of the linguistic features assessed at the two highest test levels.
- Test results are sometimes inaccurate for a variety of reasons. It is useful to review placement decisions after a week or two in a program and, if required, adjust student placement up or down as appropriate.
It is also possible to derive another set of score data from the IPT Oral Tests based on the number of items that the student answered correctly during test administration, which is known as the student’s raw score. It requires a bit of work for the paper-based IPT, as you will need to go back to the student’s test record and count how many items the student answered correctly. The raw score can be reported in standardized score units: scaled scores, percentiles, and normal curve equivalents (NCEs). Some administrative systems require users to report standardized scores, and this is why these scores are provided.
Copyright © 2021 Ballard & Tighe, Publishers, a division of Educational Ideas, Inc.
These pages may be printed for use by course participants only.