Anonymous wrote:ERBs are meaningless unless your child has actually been specifically taught the content they cover. Many privates "dont teach to the test" and therefore, if not everything has been covered, the students won't do as well. Some schools have kids practice that format of tests, some don't. If your kid is new, maybe they haven't covered the same topics and if from public, they have more standardized test practice than most from private. I look at the detailed results and see if there are any specific content areas where your student is behind and ask the teacher. Otherwise, I'd forget about them.

It's easier to score really well when comparing your kids score to public school national norm--not as much when compared to only independent school. My kid always lands in top 1-2% NN, but in the 85-91% of independent and/or school norm. It's normal.

ERBs are meaningless unless your child has actually been specifically taught the content they cover. Many privates "dont teach to the test" and therefore, if not everything has been covered, the students won't do as well. Some schools have kids practice that format of tests, some don't. If your kid is new, maybe they haven't covered the same topics and if from public, they have more standardized test practice than most from private. I look at the detailed results and see if there are any specific content areas where your student is behind and ask the teacher. Otherwise, I'd forget about them.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Not trying to brag at all! Sometimes I see discussions on this board about whether private is actually better than public for academically-inclined kids. We just started private, but I have not been convinced to date that my kid was around stronger students (academically speaking) in private as compared to his public (given that our APS school pulls from relatively rich neighborhoods). This seems to suggest that he is, indeed, surrounded by a stronger cohort, and I'm thrilled he's not at the very top of his class anymore.

PP, and I totally hear you. Honestly, what you are paying for in privates is smaller class sizes and an academically better performing cohort of kids. For example, my DS is middle of the pack by nature (upper middle at best), and we do private for that very reason. If he is going to be “average” then I’d rather it happen within a group of bright kids. Obviously, there are exceptions to my rule of thumb within public — magnet schools being a great example, but this is mostly how it plays out.

OP here. Not trying to brag at all! Sometimes I see discussions on this board about whether private is actually better than public for academically-inclined kids. We just started private, but I have not been convinced to date that my kid was around stronger students (academically speaking) in private as compared to his public (given that our APS school pulls from relatively rich neighborhoods). This seems to suggest that he is, indeed, surrounded by a stronger cohort, and I'm thrilled he's not at the very top of his class anymore.

Kid is doing great, and I can’t tell if this is an humble brag post or not. Normal variation between national norms and your private school norm. This should be the same throughout HS and for SAT/ACT as well.

Your child is doing awesome. I wouldn't worry about the minutiae. I also don't understand what exactly your question is. She's definitely in a strong class since she's in the 75-85th percentile of kids in her class but in the 90th percentile and above compared to kids in other privates. So your child is doing well, and her class is doing well. Congrats!

This is our first year in private school and we just received our child's ERB report. In addition to the national norms and independent school norms, our school provided the local grade norms (e.g., how our kid did in comparison to other kids in his grade at his school). His national norm results were all 99th percentile (as every assessment at our public also showed, and which was true for all the APS-wide percentages as well), his independent school percentiles are in the lower 90s, but his local grade norm ("GN" on the ERB report) percentiles are between 75 and 85 percent. This indicates to me that he's in a much stronger cohort of peers in terms of academics, in that a quarter or so of the kids in his grade are doing better than him. Am I missing something? We never got explicit information on a report from our North Arlington public about how our daughter compared to her peers, but we were told by the math specialist that her standardized test scores were consistently in the top "one or two" for her grade on MAP, COGAT, NNAT.