USATestprep Reviews

Pros

From a SPED perspective, USATestPrep is a great asset to have in your toolkit! It allows individuals to have an individualized learning plan, if the teacher puts in just a little effort. Here are the pros:
- Students can independently see their strengths and weaknesses and work to improve
- Teachers can offer remediation to small groups of kids who need help with specific topics
- There's a variety of ways to practice: question sets, performance tasks, reading assignments, videos, games, puzzles. Lots of ways to engage diverse learners.
- Teachers can control the difficulty of questions being asked. It's awesome!
- Teachers can shorten assignments (which is often an accommodation on the IEP) with the click of a button.
- This could be used as an extra support in a resource classroom to supplement what teachers are doing in the classroom.
- It's easily navigated by students and teachers.

Cons

No real cons stick out from a SPED perspective. I suppose one could say that because there's so much here, an individual could get "lost in the weeds" at first. But USATestPrep provides a lot of help and has great customer support, so just be patient and this will not be a problem. One may also feel that it's a steep price if funding is a difficulty, but when you consider all that's available through the platform - it really is worth it.

Pros

The functionality of this project is superior to any of its kind. It’s aligned specifically to the standards that my students have to master and differentiated to reach each individual student. This makes my teaching preparation and colleague collaboration much more effective and efficient. I would recommend this to any teacher of any grade, content area, and level of student.

Cons

I like all the features involved with this program.

Pros

I really enjoyed how easy it was to sign up students for this program after we purchased a lesson. It integrated well with our class rosters. The games and activities were refreshing and fun for the students. Some (but not nearly all) of the questions were also worthwhile.

Cons

I used USA Test Prep to prepare students for the AP exams and our statewide graduation-required exam. I stopped using the program because it had serious issues with aligning questions to the standards. We found numerous questions that were not written at the correct level (Bloom's Taxonomy) and numerous others that were mis-categorized (i.e., fiction categorized as nonfiction). This is a paid program, so I was disappointed by this fact.

Pros

It is an easy program for students to use. The questions are a great match to our state test. It is easy to see growth and assign individualized work for students. I love this program!

Cons

I wish that the program had the ability to divide the students by subgroups. That would help my data gathering.

Pros

USA Test Prep lightens my teaching load by giving me a comprehensive bank of resources that are aligned with my curriculum. Bell ringers, formative and summative assessments, tutorial videos, data, a grade book and so much more are well organized and easy to use for both teachers and students. Students and teachers both receive immediate and valuable feedback with which to improve student learning. Students enjoy the games and performance based activities, and I love how much they have learned and how well they have performed on state testing since incorporating this resource into my curriculum. My students have bragged to me that the state test was easy because of the activities they completed on USA Test Prep.

Cons

Honestly, the only con that I have found is that the program offers so many resources, it can be difficult at first to learn it all. However, the support the company provides is excellent, so every question I have ever had has been taken care of immediately.

Pros

My 6th graders love practicing their skills on USA Test Prep! They are challenged by some questions but the hints help them and they love that part! They are so ready for the testing in the spring that they tell me how easy the Milestones is for them. The students tell me that the best part of USA TEST PREP is that the questions use the same wording as Milestones, so they get used to the wording and know what to do when they see it. Overall an EXCELLENT product!

Cons

If I had to find something that I don't like, and this is being picky, every once in a great while there is a question with a word that the kids don't know. It's never a word that's vital to the question yet not knowing it causes the kids to stop, get a little off track with the math, and try to figure out the word. I am trying to remember an example but cannot....

Pros

I like having the ability to differentiate instruction and testing utilizing this software. I served as the administrator for my school and creating professional development opportunities was a breeze as the teachers were able to effectively use the software in their classrooms. As well being able to troubleshoot problems was easy. Students found that the activities were engaging and not overly time consuming. The test data was displayed in such a way that analyzing was made simple whether the teacher is a first year or a veteran.

Cons

I honestly do not have any cons for this software. I have utilized it and administered it in three different schools and I LOVE IT!!!!!!

Pros

As a classroom teacher, USATP was phenomenal piece of the puzzle I used to ensure students were mastering content, progressing toward goals, determining gaps in knowledge, and engagement. Tons of pros with USATP. There's variety - whole class activities and games, preloaded assessments and quiz banks, performance tasks, benchmarking, review videos, interactive and content-based games.

Cons

Because there are so many great things about USATP, it takes some time to learn your way around. With that said, however, USATP has a great and helpful staff who are quick to help and offer advice. In some content areas, such as state history, USATP struggles to provide relevant questions in the bank. However, they have greatly improved over the last 7 years.

Pros

Easy to set up and save test questions, individual tests, run data, etc. This is our goto source for diagnostic and formative testing

Cons

It would be great if the program would allow you to throw out questions that appear statistically unreliable and rescore the tests for you, as well as show a curve option.

Pros

I have taught for over 14 years and we have used this program for a large part of that time. All three school systems have used it. I love the large amount of resources in this site and the ability to track their progress.

Cons

There are so many resources on this site that there is nothing so can complain about. It’s amazing.

Pros

I like the fact that student get immediate feedback. It allows me to which elements they are weak in. I am able to assign different assignments to students in the same class.

Cons

I do not like the following:
- unable to share assignments with teachers from other schools
- unable to time assignments
- students are able to copy and paste questions in web bowser

Pros

It is aligned with FSA. Our students could practice with a benchmark any time they liked. It really helped with our overall FSA scores.

Cons

I would like to be able to see old scores along with retake scores. I would also like to be able to see everything the student does even if they don't identify the teachers they want to see it.

Pros

Being able to individualize to each student's specific needs. The ability to use for both formative and summative evaluations. The games feature that has the students working hard on skills to be able to play a short game. Earning tokens for games by working harder on their practices.

Cons

Hard to really think of any. As I've expressed my concerns, USAtestprep has been on top of accommodating my classroom needs. Not having workshops offered on weekends. I would like longer ones on weekends. The 1/2 day one I attended was too packed. I'd like more time to use the program as we're going over the things. And, I'd like to have the workshop on days I don't have to be out of the classroom - summer or weekend.

Pros

I like that the curriculum is rigorous and straight to the point. My students can work on targeted areas of weakness and strength so that I can give them work that they need. Each student can have a login and not worry about being singled out for needing to work on a lower area.

The tests are also awesome for setting of assessments that are preparing them for the end of the year.

Cons

When the website crashes, it throws the routine off. It doesn't happen often, but it sometimes has caused problems.

Pros

USA Test Prep allows me to help my students based on the standards. I can assign practice, tasks, games, or tests based on class weaknesses or individual weaknesses. It automatically tracks how each student is progressing on each standard. This saves me a ton of time!
Their customer service goes above and beyond. They not only answer a question but go the extra step to give you suggestions if it is an issue they cannot fix.

Cons

Occasionally there are not enough questions for a standard (but if I email them to ask for more, they work on it!)

Pros

My favorite aspect is the ability to automatically assign each student practice based on his or her lowest area on a test. I do this after a pretest so that students are able to practice exactly what they need before the post test.

Cons

I dislike that one teacher can turn the arcade off for the entire site. I know when I am gone and a sub has my class, I like to turn the arcade off. But that means I am turning it off for another teacher's class.

Pros

I like having real-time data on their performance, as well as giving the students multiple ways to study and remediate on their own.

Cons

As a British Literature teacher, there are few passages that I can use to create exams for my students, which is how my school uses this software. I would like to have more DOK level 3 multiple choice questions for a wider range of texts. Also, it would be easier to have more questions for each passage, instead of assigning so many passages to the students in order to fulfill our DOK & standard minimum.

Pros

When I go through a day and teachers that I work with feel good about assessment and assessment results it is a very good day. UTP has leveled the field in public education. Now all teachers can easily generate reports, disseminate data, collaborate in a meaningful way in PLC’s that can truly be data driven.

Cons

Would like more questions and standards alignment in a few areas

Pros

I love that the questions can be ordered by DOK, Standard, or domain. The different set ups allow me to differentiate in my class based on lexile and development. I can also create assignments that check for learning at the element, standard, and domain level.

Cons

I dislike that a printed quiz can only be 30 questions. Many of my students (live in rural area) don't have internet connection at home. So I print out the questions for them to complete at home. It's aggravating to have to print 3 different tests in order to ensure the students have access to all the questions.

Pros

I love the fact that remediation can be created off of benchmarks. It's user friendly on that aspect. The times I have "issues" or wishes with it, I can contact customer service and often their response is that they are working on it or they will forward it to the development team. Some suggestions I have made in the past have been implemented.

Cons

The gradebook is cumbersome. Remediation doesn't fit easily in it. I wish remediation could come off of more than just the benchmarks.

Pros

As an American literature teacher, my classes use this software weekly to prepare for the Milestone assessment. I love the ease of use of the software to create and grade assessments. Most useful are the options available to pull reports and compare data. The embedded data comparisons save me valuable time that I can spend planning instruction rather than crunching numbers.

Cons

I would like to see USA TP offer more American literature specific passages. Currently, our ninth grade teachers often use some of the same nonfiction passages that we use in eleventh grade. With more American literature specific passages, we can ensure that our assessments are accurate.

Pros

I use this in my classroom as well as with my personal children who are home-schooled. I have been using USA Test Prep for 5 years and consider it a required tool for my teaching. It allows me to assign students assignments that are individualized for their learning and makes grading very easy.

Cons

It does not allow for Spanish speaking students who are just learning English. As a home school parent it is too costly since I have to buy one subject at a time.

Pros

The incredibly amount of data and sorting it provides is truly great, and makes work on the teacher much less incredulous. The truth is that teachers generally know where students and what skills are appropriate to teach them. Sometimes, though, I was surprised to see that I was differentiating for a particular student incorrectly, and USATestPrep's data helped me to see where the student's weaknesses truly were. Moreover, when your department asks you for data, USATestPrep makes it INCREDIBLY simple to generate graphs. This used to take at least an hour in Excel with hand-graded tests, but now only takes a few minutes.

Cons

There are very few cons, but I wish there were more options to create your own questions. You can create your own questions to use on tests, but not to include in assignments yet. I think there needs to be a few more options in the question creation tool as well, such as to upload a picture for the answer choices.

Pros

I love how user-friendly the software is, I've tried other software types to do the same thing and some are very cumbersome and time consuming. This one is the best I've encountered so far for ease in building benchmarks and collecting data. Additionally, it's got so much more from simple worksheet generators, to prebuilt worksheets, bell ringers, videos, educational games, etc.

Cons

There are two things, I'd like to have it setup so that I can enter parent emails alongside student accounts so that the results of the students can be shared with the parents when I want them to be easily. I'd also like the ability to do a bit more with the data I collect.

Pros

The ease in finding resources correlated to state standards allows for me to plan with more ease, and to find engaging yet rigorous activities for students. The ability to differentiate lessons and activities based on the benchmark assessments I create also is a highlight of the program. Lastly, the printable resources assist me in differentiating for centers or small group instruction.

Cons

I think it would be great if the lessons were adaptive to students' needs other than just after a benchmark assessment.