State Performance Review

posted by Karen Quinn, The Testing Mom - April 10th, 2014

If your child is facing an upcoming state performance review or other type of standardized test, you’re undoubtedly concerned over helping them perform to their highest abilities. You’re not alone – the vast majority of parents of school age children put a great deal of effort into standardized testing prep. With so many standardized tests, preparing for all of them can seem like a full-time job, especially for parents with two or more children in school.

Thankfully, there are methods of preparing for a state performance review which won’t break the bank. Here, we’ll review the best ways to help your child succeed.

Creating Your Own Study Guide

State performance reviews are nearly always based on learned knowledge which comes from your child’s curriculum and textbooks. This makes their textbooks a great resource when it comes to saving money and helping your child succeed at the same time. Since the newest common core tests place a heavy focus on English language arts (ELA), be sure to choose pieces of text which offer both ELA and fact-based questions for review.

Free Online Questions

A large number of sites offer free study and practice questions for virtually every test and state performance review currently administered. At http://www.ixl.com/standards/common-core/math, you can find practice math questions as well as helpful state performance statistics.

Ready-Made Study Materials

A standardized test or state performance review study session can be greatly helped through the use of ready-made, purchased study guides or study packages. However, these can get expensive very quickly. Before you purchase a brand-new study package, look around for deals on used packages. With more software-based study guides available than ever before, purchasing used is more reliable than in the past, when used hard-copy guides were of little use. Before you purchase anything used, make sure that the guide is in like-new condition and is still relevant to the testing battery your child will be administered.