All of our measures are designed to be appropriate for students in the middle of the year at their particular grade level. Therefore, the measures may seem too difficult for students taking tests at the beginning of the school year. As the year progresses, that will level out for the students and you should see progress in their knowledge and skill base.
All of the measures in a given skillset (skillsets are: Letter Names, Phoneme Segmenting, Letter Sounds, Word Reading Fluency, Passage Reading Fluency, Proficient Reading, and each of the three math sections) are designed to be of equivalent difficulty. Therefore, if a student does poorly on one test, and then targeted instruction is provided to help the student improve their skills, you can have the student take a different form of the same test type and use that score to identify improvement.
The first number of a measure indicates the grade level. The second number is an arbitrary number that distinguishes one measure from another. The numbering of the assessments does not represent the order in which to administer them or their degree of difficulty. Rather, it is a way to keep track of the tests. For ease of use, we recommend beginning with form 1 and then working up from there as the weeks pass. It’s simply easier to remember what number comes next if continuing in numerical order.
For reading, the skillsets stair-step in difficulty beginning with the fundamentals of reading: Letter Names, Phoneme Segmenting, Letter Sounds, and progressing up to the more difficult skills of Word Reading Fluency, Passage Reading Fluency, and the hardest of all, Proficient Reading.
For math, the skillsets do not stair-step in difficulty. Rather, they align with set math focal point standards for each grade level. So, one section of math skills will concentrate on a particular focal point, the second focal point, and the last one on the third focal point. One skillset is not necessarily more difficult a concept than the other, just designed to test set focal point standards.