TACHS Prep: Practice Tests
Six timed subtests.
Worked answers, not answer keys.
TACHS practice for iPhone and iPad that opens with a short free diagnostic — a map, not a score — and builds a study plan around the November test date. The practice tests run in the test's own shape: Reading, Written Expression, Mathematics, then the three short Ability subtests of figure puzzles, each on its own clock, with no penalty for a wrong answer. Every question shows its method, step by step.
Built for the test as it is now
The TACHS runs on screen, in six timed subtests, one after another: Reading, Written Expression, Mathematics, and three short Ability subtests of figure puzzles. About two hours and ten minutes of testing, with a short break between subtests. Inside a subtest you can skip, mark and come back; once you submit a subtest you cannot return to it. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so every question gets an answer.
Practice here runs by those same rules: six subtests, each on its own clock, answer choices lettered the way the test letters them, a cross-out tool for choices you have ruled out, a highlighter on the reading passages, and a basic calculator in the math subtest, the way the test platform now provides one. The format itself is a lesson, so nothing on test day is new.
The real test is taken at home, in a web browser on a computer — not on an iPad or a phone. The app rehearses the shape, the timing and the tools; it is not the testing platform and does not claim to be. The number of questions and the minutes per subtest are the app's own form, built to the published total, and the app says "about" wherever the official handbook prints no number.
The Ability section, drawn
Figure matrices, paper folding, figure classification: puzzles most students have never seen before test day, and the part of the TACHS no textbook rehearses well. Here they are drawn on screen, hundreds of them, each with a worked explanation of the rule behind it, and short lessons on how to read each format — what a row rule and a column rule are, how to track a fold and a punch in your head, what "alike in certain ways" means when the three figures are all different.
How it works
1. A diagnostic that is a map, not a score
A 28-question diagnostic, about half an hour, across all four sections. It does not hand back a number and a shrug — it shows which skills are solid and which are leaking points, and it decides where you start.
2. A plan built to your test date
The TACHS is given once a year, in early November, and a student sits it once. Tell the app the date and it builds a day-by-day plan that fits the weeks remaining, rebalancing as your accuracy changes.
3. Worked answers, not answer keys
Every question shows the method, step by step, and then checks the answer against it. Get one wrong and you find out why, not just which letter you missed. The error journal keeps what you miss and brings it back at the right moment, because review is where scores move.
4. Adaptive Practice — a study tool, and only that
Adaptive Practice is a shorter mode that picks what to ask next from how you are doing, so it finds your working level quickly instead of spending an evening on questions that are too easy or too hard, and tells you the difficulty level you were working at in each section.
It is not a rehearsal of test day, and we will not sell it as one. The real TACHS does not change its questions in response to your answers — everyone sitting it gets the same form. The full-length timed tests in the app are the rehearsal; Adaptive Practice is how you get through more useful questions in an hour.
Made for iPad, including Apple Pencil
On iPad the question sits beside a scratch pad you can write on with Apple Pencil or a finger, and your working stays next to the worked explanation afterwards so you can compare them line by line. Reading passages open side by side with their questions rather than folded into a drawer.
One page your child can send you
Most prep apps build the parent dashboard and hide it from the student. This one goes the other way: your child makes the report and decides to send it. It covers days practised, questions answered, where the practice actually went, and which topics are worth a look next — and it says plainly, on the page, that this is practice performance and not a predicted score. Nothing is uploaded to produce it: the report is assembled on the device as a one-page PDF and shared the same way your child shares anything else.
What is inside
- 1,420 practice questions across the four sections, every one with a worked explanation.
- 85 lessons with worked examples, reachable from the question that exposed the gap.
- 62 reading and Written Expression passage sets, each with its full question set.
- Full practice tests in the six-subtest format, drawn fresh to the same blueprint every time, so a test is worth sitting more than once.
- The three Ability formats, drawn on screen, with lessons on how to read each one.
- An error journal that remembers what you got wrong and brings it back at the right time.
The questions and passages are original to this app. They are drafted against written specifications and put through the project's own automated and blind checks before they ship; the app tells you how many there are, which is something it can prove about itself.
Free, permanently — and then one payment
Free for good: the diagnostic and the study plan it builds, your error journal and your progress, ten new questions a day up to 150 in all, and unlimited redo of anything you have already answered. Your progress is never lost or locked away, with or without the pass, and after it expires.
The pass is a single payment with no auto-renewal. It lasts 365 days from the day you buy it, it does not renew itself, and there is no subscription to remember to cancel. It unlocks every full practice test, the whole lesson library, and the whole question bank with no daily limit.
Radically private, on purpose
The people using this app are thirteen. So it collects nothing: no accounts, no sign-up, no ads, no analytics, no tracking, and no third-party SDK that could quietly add any of those. Your child's answers, plan and scratch work stay on the device, and sync only through your own private iCloud, which we cannot read. The App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected, because that is literally true. Read the full privacy policy — it is short, in plain English, and specific about the two places where something does leave the device at your child's choosing.
Written for eighth graders sitting the TACHS for the Archdiocese of New York, the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, and the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Riverside Insights or any diocese or school.