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Q. How is this service different from others?

A. Piedmont Education Services' use of the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Brief Form, Secon Edition (KTEA-II Brief Form) is different in the following ways:

1. Home-school and student/parent/teacher friendly
2. Based upon an educational philosophy recognizing the uniqueness of each child
3. A quick, reliable measure of educational achievement that meets both student needs and NC state reporting requirements
4. Additional curriculum counseling and consultation available at minimal charge upon request


Home-school and student/parent/teacher friendly

While classically trained in traditional classroom education, everyone on our staff is either currently homeschooling their children or is a homeschooling veteran. 

Since the Mungers are not administering tests this year (Mrs. Munger is helping homeschool some of her grandchildren, and Mr. Munger is handling more of the office management responsibilities and doing more curriculum counseling), therefore, we have developed a working referral arrangement in affiliation with Mr. Dana Forbes and Forbes Testing Service, to administer the test to your students.

Mr. Forbes is highly qualified with an M.A. in Educational Leadership through Mesa State College, Colorado.  Graduate level courses in "Best Practices in Curriculum and Assessment" and training in administering the CSAP, Colorado's statewide assessment and the SAT for high school juniors, as well as teaching experience in public and private schools has prepared him for a variety of test administration duties.  Dana is certified as both teacher and principal in Colorado by the Colorado Department of Education, and as a Career Teacher in Missouri by that State's Board of Education.  He is also a member of Christian Educator's of America.  Mr. Forbes has had over twenty years experience as a teacher and principal in Christian and public schools and in age levels from five to eighteen. He and his wife decided to homeschool their three boys from their earliest years. Their oldest son homeschooled K-12 and went on to graduate from Patrick Henry University and is now writing novels and helping produce films. The second son had all but one year in homeschooling and is presently attending Colorado School of Mines to earn a degree in Civil Engineering. The youngest boy homeschooled all but two years and began attending Mesa State College this fall.  The Forbes are presently home schooling their twin nine year old girls.  Dana believes homeschooling is the best possible educational option for parents to pursue, since the child is afforded individual attention and may proceed at his or her own pace, programs can be custom tailored to the child, values important to the family are much easier to impart and for the child to retain, and consistency is maintained as the schedule works for the family and the child.

Greg Munger is the founder and president of Piedmont Education Services, and will be providing most of the academic & curriculum consultations.  After starting out in the educational field as a traditional classroom teacher in public and private schools for several years, Greg and his wife home schooled their four children for 14 years, teaching all the major subjects from Kindergarten through grade 12. All four children have now graduated from their home school high school and gone on to succeed in college, business and family life. In addition, the Mungers have been in leadership in the home school community in North Carolina (having served two years as Administrative V.P. of North Carolinians for Home Education, eight years as assistant to the director for the NCHE Conference & Book Fair, and six years as president of their local home school support group, Forsyth Home Educators).

Our services seek to support and strengthen families in many areas and many ways - whether they are involved in homeschool, private school or public school education - believing that God has given parents the right, privilege and responsibility to bring up their children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."


An educational philosophy recognizing the uniqueness of each child

It was during this time of leadership and personal home schooling for the Mungers (who also has enjoyed five previous years of classroom teaching, on both Elementary & Secondary levels, in both public and private traditional schools in NC & SC), that they developed their educational philosophy, based upon the biblical teaching of the uniqueness of each child, as found in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

They believe that all children can learn, but just not in the same way nor at the same rate. There are different ways of perceiving and taking in information; different ways of ordering or using and processing the things we perceive; different ways of remembering, understanding and even of being intelligent. Too often, traditional classroom instruction is not, or cannot, be tailored to meet those differences. Learning problems often arise as a result. Home schooling, however, is the perfect environment to make those adjustments and tailor each student's education to his unique characteristics.

Now, with the help of the Kaufman achievement tests (KTEA-II Brief Form®), and based upon the various insights they have gained in their dealing with hundreds of children and their parents, Mr. Forbes and Mr. Munger seek to help parent-educators pinpoint and nurture those unique qualities in each of their children.


A quick, reliable measure of educational achievement that meets both student needs and NC state reporting requirements

There is a full-length version of the KTEAII - the Comprehensive Form - that has fourteen different subtests and can take as long as two hours to administer. While the complete battery of questions can be helpful in some instances, it is our opinion that the full-length version is not necessary for the majority of students. Certainly there are times when using all the individual subtests gives valuable insight into student behavior and academic achievement. However, we believe that quite often administering the entire Cromprehensive test battery unnecessarily wears out the student, leading to poor performance on the whole, especially when it is administered in a single setting. This is especially true of those children who have learning difficulties or other challenges; the very students who could benefit most by the tests are often the ones who are helped the least because of a long testing session.  

On the other hand, the KTEA-II Brief Form takes betwen 30-45 min. to administer (depending on the age and grade of the student). It is especially helpful for children with learning challenges and physical limitations (for whom certain accommodatins are made).  But the test can also be used quite successfully with all types of learners and all levels of ability, to obtain a quick, reliable acurate assessment of academic abilities in a relaxed, less formal and less stressful test setting. Here are descriptions of the tasks required of students who take the KTEA-II Brief Form:

Reading Recognition - The student identifies letters and pronounces words of gradually increasing difficulty. Most words are irregular or unpredictable, meaning that their pronunciations do not strictly follow phonetic rules, to ensure that the subtest measures word recognition (reading vocabulary) more than decoding ability.

Reading Comprehension - The younger student reads a simple instruction and responds by doing what the instruction says.  On later items, the examinee reads a passage and gives oral answers to literal or inferential questions about it.  The most difficult items assess comprehension by requiring the examinee to respond orally or with gestures to commands given in printed statements.

Math - An oral response is given to some test items that focus on the application of mathemathical principles to real life situations.  Written responses are made to math problems in the printed response booklet.  Skill categories include number concepts, whole-number operations, fractions, decimals and percents, time and money, measurement, geometry, algebra, data investigation, and higher math concepts.

English Grammar & Spelling - Students in K-5 write letters and words from dictation, and write short phrases to complete sentences.  At Grades 1 and higher, the examinee completes writing tasks embedded in a newsletter about dogs.  Tasks at those levels include adding punctuation and capitalization, filling in missing words, completing sentences, and writing original sentences.  Also, the student spells regular and irregular words dictated by the test administrator. (Allowances and accommodations are made for students with learning challenges or physical limitations.)

The KTEA-II Brief Form is affordable to the majority of families and, since it is a natinally standardized achievement test in the areas of Reading, Spelling, English Grammar and Math, it meets all the reporting requirements of North Carolina home education law and the regulatory agency, DNPE. Most students enjoy the relaxed pace and friendly, flexible administration of the Kaufman test. Usually, the only students who don't do well on the KTEA-II Brief Form are those who, because of their unique learning styles, prefer written, multiple-choice tests than on these non-timed, flexible, predominantly verbal ones.

This shorter test battery is every bit as acurate for assessing annual academic achievement as is the longer, strictly timed, fill-in-the-bubble types of test.  Even though there are fewer questions on the KTEA-II Brief Form, those particular questions have been chosen to most acurately reflect the student's knowledge of the subject matter being tested and the particular skills being measured.  The test questions progress from easy to difficult and through many grade levels and skill measurements.  Like all nationally standardized achievement tests, the KTEA-II Brief Form scores are not based on the percentage of correct answers, but on the statistical comparison of the individual student's performance with those of children in his grade and age in the norming sample. The reports generated by data provided by the test publisher provide a wide range of normative data - including Grade Equivalents, Percentile Rankings, Proficiency and Age Equivalents - which compare the individual student to a nation-wide sampling of students from public and private school across the nation.


Additional home schooling counseling and consultation

Not only can we help parent-teachers better utilize the test results for their individual children as they comply with state home school law, but we can also provide additional home schooling counseling and consultation, available at minimal charge upon request. For only an additional $10 per student, we will provide you a personal consultation (or by phone or email if you prefer), approximately 15-20 minutes in length, to discuss your child(ren)'s test results.  At each testing session, we look for the student's learning styles and try to couple them with appropriate teaching methods. As may be necessary or requested, we offer suggestions for better teaching and evaluations of different curriculum available. We are often able to assess various physical or academic problems a student may have and then recommend outside professional help if needed.