How many students across the state and nation annually take the Iowa Assessments, formerly the Iowa Test of Basic Skills?

Approximately 360,000 Iowa students in kindergarten through grade 12 annually take the Iowa Assessments, created and written by University of Iowa College of Education’s experts in the Iowa Testing Programs (ITP). The Iowa Assessments are also taken in schools throughout the United States and overseas by approximately 3 million students annually.

Through Iowa Testing Programs’ ongoing research, the Iowa Assessments measure student growth from year to year and provide up-to-date national comparisons for individuals and groups. Research is under way to allow both online and paper versions of the Iowa Assessments to be available, thus allowing Iowa schools to choose the model most efficient for them.

Every question on the Iowa Assessments is aligned to the college- and career-ready standards of the Iowa Core in Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. This allows monitoring of student progress from kindergarten through high school and provides information about how ready Iowa students are for postsecondary education.

Iowa Testing Programs delivers the Iowa Assessments to all Iowa school districts, both public and private, on a cost-for-services basis of $3.50 per student. ITP offers a variety of online assessments—interim, end-of-course, algebra readiness—to all Iowa school districts also at cost for $2.75 per student. ITP also delivers a variety of other assessments—writing and constructed-response assessments—at no cost to Iowa taxpayers.

For more information on Iowa Testing Programs, visit itp.education.uiowa.edu.