Homeschool Achievement Tests: ITBS, CAT, Stanford, and MAP Compared

If your state asks for a nationally normed achievement test, you will spend an afternoon discovering that four different acronyms all seem to qualify, that half the sellers want a bachelor's degree before they will ship you a test booklet, and that almost nobody publishes a straight comparison.

Most families type "ITBS test homeschool" first. That is reasonable and slightly out of date: the Iowa Test of Basic Skills is now sold as the Iowa Assessments Form E. It is still the default choice, and after a 2025 re-norming it is arguably the strongest one. But the Stanford 10, the California Achievement Test, TerraNova, and MAP Growth are all live options, and they differ in ways that hit your calendar, your budget, and the credibility of the score you file.

This guide puts the five side by side, then solves the part that actually stalls people: finding someone allowed to give the test.

Achievement Test, Placement Test, Aptitude Test: Three Different Jobs

An achievement test measures what a student has already learned, scored against a national sample of same-grade peers. That comparison is the entire point. When a statute asks for a "nationally normed standardized achievement test," it wants a norm-referenced test whose report can state that your ninth grader read at the 68th percentile relative to a representative group of ninth graders.

Two neighbors get confused with it constantly.

Placement tests tell you which level of a curriculum to buy. Singapore Math, Saxon, and Sonlight all publish them, they are usually free, and they carry no norming sample. No state accepts one as evidence of progress.

Aptitude tests such as the CogAT measure reasoning potential rather than learned content. Gifted programs ask for these. They are not achievement tests, and ordering one by mistake is a $37 lesson.

That distinction also settles the most common budget question. There is no free official achievement test. A search for "free CAT test online" turns up either a practice sample or a curriculum placement quiz. Real achievement tests come from licensed publishers, and licensing costs money.

The Five Instruments Homeschoolers Actually Use

Publishers produce dozens of assessments. Homeschool testing services sell five in any real volume: Riverside Insights publishes the Iowa Assessments, Pearson the Stanford 10, and Data Recognition Corporation the TerraNova, whose older sibling the California Achievement Test still circulates in survey form. NWEA publishes MAP Growth, which sits apart for reasons covered below.

Nearly everything else is one of those five wearing a reseller's label, a one-on-one diagnostic such as the Woodcock-Johnson given by a trained evaluator, or the P.A.S.S., a lighter criterion-referenced option some states accept and others do not.

Read the first table for fit and the second for logistics. Families almost always choose on the first and then get stuck on the second.

Grades, Format, Timing, and How Current the Norms Are

2026 Cost, Turnaround, and Who May Administer

Iowa Assessments (ITBS): The Default Pick, and Now the Best-Normed One

The Iowa Test is what most people mean when they search for homeschool testing, and in 2026 it has a genuine technical argument behind it. Riverside Insights released new norms in August 2025, built from roughly 4.6 million student records and weighted to federal enrollment data.^[1] Every other instrument on this page is comparing your child to a sample gathered years earlier. If you want a percentile that reflects the peers your child actually has, this is the one.

Form E covers reading, language arts, math, science, and social studies from kindergarten through twelfth grade, spread over two or three testing days.

The friction is the paper edition, and the rule is set by the seller rather than the test. BJU Press requires administrators to be approved in advance and states that Iowa "prefers" a bachelor's degree, though its application accepts a high school diploma as well.^[3] Triangle Education Assessments requires a BA for its paper forms outright. Seton lists no degree requirement at all. Prices land between $40 and $52 for paper depending on grade and vendor, and $45 for the online version everywhere.^[2][3]

Choose Iowa when your state has a percentile threshold to clear and you want the least arguable report in the file.

Stanford 10: The Rigorous One That Never Starts a Clock

The Stanford Achievement Test, tenth edition, manages to be the most demanding of the paper instruments and the gentlest at the same time. Pearson describes it as untimed at every level, running anywhere from two and a quarter to five and a half hours depending on grade. That combination is unusual, and it is a genuinely good fit for a child who knows the material but freezes the moment a timer starts.

Family Learning Organization sells Stanford 10 Online at $45 per student for grades 3 through 12 and asks only that an adult sit with the student as on-site proctor.^[4]

Paper Stanford is the strictest product in this comparison. BJU Press requires pre-approval, a bachelor's degree, and an administrator training video, with full-time teaching experience or current state certification as the only substitute. Paper scoring can take six weeks.^[3] If you need it, start in February for a spring deadline.

One practical warning: untimed means a nine-year-old can sit there a very long while if you let her. Split it across two or three mornings and nobody suffers.

CAT and TerraNova: Cheap, Easy to Order, and Older Than You Think

The California Achievement Test and TerraNova are branches of the same family, and for homeschoolers they solve the same problem: a nationally normed score with no credential standing in the way. They are also where the most important unadvertised fact on this page lives.

There is no single CAT. There are at least four products sold under that name, and their norming samples are old. Seton's CAT Survey for grades 4 through 12 costs $37 and uses 1986 norms. Family Learning Organization's CAT/5 costs $40 and uses 1992 norms.^[2][4] Christian Liberty still sells a 1970 edition, describing it as more demanding than newer versions.^[6] Academic Excellence offers an online CAT at $25, the cheapest option anywhere, but never discloses the edition, publisher, or norming year at all.^[5]

None of that makes these tests illegitimate. A 1992-normed CAT satisfies a statute that says "nationally normed," and thousands of families file one every year without incident. But a percentile is a comparison, and a comparison to 1992 eighth graders is not the same claim as a comparison to 2024 eighth graders. If the score is purely a compliance artifact, save the money. If you plan to make instructional decisions from it, or if your state attaches a consequence to the number, spend the extra ten dollars on Iowa.

TerraNova is the modern half of the family and adds science and social studies. TerraNova 3 runs K–12 on 2017 norms at about $47 through Seton; TerraNova 2, marketed as CAT/6, covers grades 2 through 12 on 2005 norms at $43 to $45, or $85 through Triangle.^[2][4] Neither requires a degree in any format, which is why they remain the go-to for parents without one.

MAP Growth: Reachable, Just Not From NWEA

MAP Growth is the test homeschool parents most want and most often assume they cannot get. It is computer-adaptive, adjusting difficulty question by question, and reports a RIT score that tracks growth across years instead of a single grade-level snapshot. Figure about an hour per subject, an immediate preliminary score, and a full report within a day or two. Its norms were refreshed in 2025, making it the only instrument here as current as the Iowa.^[7]

The catch is the sales channel, not eligibility. NWEA licenses MAP to schools and districts on a floor-license-plus-training model that no single family can justify, and publishes no consumer price.^[7] What families actually do is buy a seat from a reseller. Homeschool Boss, for example, charges $60 for a first student's math and reading in a testing season, $45 for each additional student, $162 for a full-year subscription covering three seasons, with language usage at $10 and science at $20 extra.^[8] The reseller supplies the proctor.

And the compliance worry is mostly unfounded. Pennsylvania, one of the few states that publishes an explicit approved-test list, has named MAP on it since 2017.^[9] Verify with your own district before you make MAP your only test, but do not assume it is disqualified because it is adaptive.

The Proctor Problem, and the Workaround Nobody Mentions

Ask in any homeschool group what stalls testing and the answer is rarely price or scheduling. It is the phrase "test administrator must hold a bachelor's degree" landing on a parent who does not have one, turning a $45 errand into a two-week search.

Two separate rules are getting tangled, and untangling them solves most cases.

The publisher's rule attaches to the paper edition, not to the test. Iowa Form E online and Stanford 10 Online both drop the degree requirement entirely, because the testing service acts as the administrator of record and only asks that an adult be present as proctor. BJU Press states it plainly: for online testing, "we provide an approved test administrator."^[3] The CAT and TerraNova never required a degree in any format. So the ordinary fix for "I can't find a proctor" is to switch to the online version, not to keep searching.

Your state's rule is the one you cannot vendor-shop around. Pennsylvania prohibits a parent from administering the test to their own child, full stop. Florida requires a certified teacher. Oregon requires a "neutral qualified person," defining neutral as having no relationship to the child by blood or marriage.^[9][12] Colorado wants a teaching license, a licensed psychologist, or a master's in education. Where a statute names who may administer, no test administrator workaround exists, and switching to an online test does not help.

Read your state rule first, then the vendor's terms. Doing it in that order saves the two-week search about half the time.

How to Find an Approved Test Administrator

Which States Accept Which Test

Most states that require testing write the rule generically. Virginia asks for "any nationally normed standardized achievement test" and a composite at or above the fourth stanine, the 23rd percentile.^[10] Florida and North Carolina use similar open language, and all five instruments here satisfy that phrasing.

A minority name specific tests. Pennsylvania publishes a statutory list including the CAT, ITBS, Stanford, TerraNova, MAP, and Woodcock-Johnson, with testing required in grades 3, 5, and 8.^[9] New York enumerates the ITBS, CAT, Stanford, CTBS, and Metropolitan, and sets its consequence threshold at the 33rd percentile.^[11] Oregon lists five approved tests and triggers remediation below the 15th.^[12] Colorado takes the opposite approach, stating outright that it maintains no list.

Full state-by-state testing requirements, including which grades must test and when results are due, are a subject of their own and outside this comparison. The rule of thumb: read the exact phrasing of your state's requirement before you order, and if it names specific tests, order one of those.

Whichever you pick, file the score report with your other documentation rather than in a kitchen drawer. Our record-keeping essentials guide covers how long to keep it and what belongs alongside it.

What the Numbers on Your Score Report Mean

• National percentile rank (NPR) — the number your state almost certainly wants. A 62 means the student performed at or above 62% of the norming sample in that grade.
• Stanine — a 1-to-9 compression of the percentile scale. Virginia's "fourth stanine" threshold is the 23rd percentile; stanines 4 through 6 make up the average band.
• Grade equivalent — the most misread number on the page. A 7.2 in math for a fourth grader does not mean she is ready for seventh grade math; it means she answered fourth grade questions as well as a typical seventh grader would have.
• RIT score (MAP only) — an equal-interval growth scale, not a grade level. Its value is the year-over-year comparison, which is why MAP appeals to families tracking progress rather than clearing a bar.
• Subtest breakdown — where the instructional value actually lives. A composite in the 50s hiding a 20th percentile in math computation tells you more than the composite ever will.

Before You Order: A Testing Checklist

The Bottom Line

The reason "ITBS test homeschool" is the phrase families type is that the Iowa is the safe answer, and after the 2025 re-norming it is also the technically strongest one. But the safe answer carries an approval process in paper form, and if that is what has you stuck, the fix is usually a format change rather than a proctor hunt.

Pick on whichever constraint actually binds you. Tight deadline: online Stanford or online Iowa, scores back in two to seven days. Tight budget: an online CAT around $25, understanding what its norms are worth. A child who cannot handle a clock: Stanford 10, untimed at every level. Tracking growth rather than clearing a threshold: MAP through a reseller, from about $60.

Then file the report and get on with your year. If your state names who may administer, or attaches a percentile consequence, talk it through with us before you order anything.