Some scores on an achievement test are less significant than others for parent educators and classroom teachers. The equivalent normal curve, commonly known as the NCE score, falls into this category.

If a score is meaningless, it is often useless and is also considered irrelevant. However, because NCEs are part of most performance test reports, here are two things to know about this score.

First, NCEs are similar to percentile ranks in that they rank your student’s score from 1 (low) to 99 (high). If you look at the sample report on our website, you will see that the NCE scores follow the NP scores as you look at the report from left to right. The NCE score for the Total score in our sample report it is 50. Achieving an NCE of 50 is the only time that the percentile score and this score are the same. When the percentile rank scores are above 50, the NCE scores will always be lower. The NCE score for Idiom the sample report illustrates this. When the percentile ranks are less than 50, the NCE scores will be higher. NCE scores for Reading Y Math the sample report illustrates this.

Second, NCE scores allow “significant” comparisons (primarily statistically significant) between different batteries of performance tests and between different tests within the same battery. How this works is complicated, and I won’t go into that here.

In the column to the right of the NCE scores are the Stanine scores. The name of this score comes from the fact that it ranks student performance on a standard scale of 1 (low) to 9 (high). A stanine score of 5 falls in the middle of this scale and in our sample report it corresponds to a 50th percentile rank, indicating that a student’s performance falls in the average range. Similarly, a stanine score of 4 is linked to a slightly lower than average percentile rank as we see Reading subtest. A stanine score of 6 is linked to a slightly higher than average percentile rank, as we see for Idiom subtest.

The value of the stanine comes from the fact that because it is expressed as a single digit number, it is easy to draw quick conclusions about a student’s performance. Stanine of 1 or 2 suggests that a student struggled with the content of the test. Stanines of 8 or 9 suggest a high degree of mastery of the concepts covered. However, keep in mind that stanines are less accurate than percentile ranks.

Thank you for reading,

Curt Bumcrot, MRE

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