Iowa Tests of Basic Skills

The Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS), created at the University of Iowa, measures year-to-year growth of students' academic skills. Every year, thousands of students in states throughout the country take this battery of tests. The ITBS, formerly referred to as the Iowa Every-Pupil Tests of Basic Skills, was first developed for elementary grade students in 1935 by faculty of the University of Iowa, under the leadership of Everett F. Lindquist. Shortly after, in 1942, this test was extended to the high school grades. The high school test battery was called the Iowa Tests of Educational Development. The Iowa Every-Pupil Tests name was shortened in 1955 to the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills.

The ITBS was created as an achievement test to show the year-to-year progression of students. It also allows students, parents, and teachers a glimpse into an individual student's academic strengths and weaknesses, and it provides teachers with information about the specific levels of their class compared to other tests in that district, state, and country to aid in teaching. Finally, the test is used to describe the student's developmental level, and the ITBS provides three types of scoring with each test: percentile ranks, grade equivalent, and standard scores.

The structure of the test is a basic multiple-choice test offering four possible answer options. The ITBS is taken in several subsections lasting approximately 30 minutes each, and the test authors suggest this 5.5-hour test be administered over 6 days. As with any test, revisions have been made over the years, with the 2001 version of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills being the most recent.

The ITBS contains questions in the areas of reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science. The skills tested at the majority of levels include, but are not limited to, vocabulary, reading comprehension, language, an understanding of maps and graphs, categorizing, and math concepts and problems. Grades 3 through 8 also test the areas of history, economics, geography, and the life sciences. The scoring for the ITBS also provides subscores for each specific skill.

Below is an example of a potential math problem in the ITBS for Grade 5:

• What is the value of m?
• 6 + 2 (m–4) = 16
• A. 8 B. 6 C. 2 D. 10

Currently, the ITBS test is published by Riverside Publishing.