At ABIS we pride ourselves on using a wide range of tools to assess our students over the course of the school year. This wide range provides us a more complete picture of each student’s strengths and weaknesses and helps us towards one of our core objectives: individualized learning.
One of those tools is the International Schools Assessment (ISA), taken every February by over 40,000 students around the world. ISA assesses students in grades 3-10 in Reading, Mathematical Literacy, and Writing. The tests are based on the framework of the OECD PISA tests, which are given every three years to 15-year olds in over 60 countries.
Since the ISA tests are taken over two days, it is important to recognize that they are merely a ‘snapshot’ of students’ abilities. They do not represent an entire year of learning and development. Furthermore, ISA results do not take into account a whole host of other factors, such as how tired the student was that day or his/her emotional state. This is why we consider the ISA tests just one of many helpful tools.
This year’s results are now available on the student websites. To find your child’s ISA results, go to his/her website and click on ‘Reports’ along the top and then ‘2014-5’. You’ll then see ‘ISA’ appear as an option.
For each subject, the gray bar represents the middle 60% of all students around the world at that grade level who took the test. The black dot is your child’s performance.