Fluency

Lil how come they were able to tell you that his standard scores were 100 or above for most tests but could only provide GE for his weak areas? The school had no problems with him being the end of 3rd grade with those scores? My son also end of third grade took the Woodcock Reading Mastery test. I was told he scored below grade level and he was recommended for summer school programing. His scores were word attack 1.8, word ident 2.3, word comp 2.6, and passage comp 2.1. They feel he has very weak phonological skills especially when it comes too blends. Did they give more then 1 reading test? what was his independent reading level? If he is “site” reading he will hit a road block, he needs to be able to decode. We too purchased RR to do over the summer. Good luck to you and your son.

Thanks Lisa,

They did do other testing - but since the scores were so close to 100 and his expected grade equivalent, I didn’t feel it necessary to list them all here. I don’t have an independent reading level - don’t know what one is.

My son also did the Woodcock Johnson last summer, with the same severe deficiencies in subtests that measured similar things.

Lil

Yes, do the PG over the summer. You will also need to keep up with some kind of practice after the PG is finished.

Some schools can be convinced, and some just stonewall for six to eight years;on average it’s better just to teach him what he needs.

An independent reading level is what level the child can read at by themselves without support. I think it is with like 90 percent accuracy. For example my sons independent reading level is 2.2 (2nd grade 2nd month) what this means is he can read any book on is own that is 2.2 level or lower (he is 3rd grade 9 month) so in other words he will have difficulty with grade level text. The school thought this was singificant enough that he was recommended for summer school where the emphasis will be on reading. School will be 3 1/2 hours a day 5 days a week. They will also cover writing and math.

Thanks Victoria - I suppose I intuitively knew what you said - but I just don’t want to believe the schools do this to children!

Lil

Thanks again Lisa,

I suppose the next question here is: Can he read it, or can he understand it? I know he can “read” many difficult words, but then when he talks about what he has read, I realize he didn’t really get the gist of the story. I’m beginning to think all this testing really tells us nothing of real value …

Lil

My understanding about the independent part of it is that this is what the child can read and understand on his own. My son can read and understand at the level they say, I have him do it at home so know this is true. For my son his understanding is higher then his ability to decode. They were surprised that his single word comprehension was at the 2.6 level. He was able to tell them antonyms, synoms, and what the words meant. On the start of year testing all areas were at or below the K level. I explained to the group that when we partner read that instead of just telling him what the word is sometimes I might say another word for, or means the oppisitte of, I have found this has helped his vocabulary greatly. If you look at the back of most chilrens book you will see something like R2. This means this is a second grade reader. You can try and see where your child is on your own by knowing what level book you are reading. When reading I also ask my son “who are the main character”, “where is the story taking place”, ect. We have been doing this for just a shor time and it has made a big difference. I hope some of these suggestions help.

Thanks, Lisa - What great ideas!

You are welcome I hope the suggestions work well for you.

I wrote in another section of this BB about Great Leaps Reading as a program to boost fluency. When a child can reads more fluently, there is more mental energy left over for thinking about the meaning. You can find info at www.greatleaps.com .

Well, now, we *have* learned something here!

We have learned that test scores are extremely limited representations of extremely limited behaviours. This is a very valuable thing to know, when you’re dealing with a bureaucratic system.

It is sometimes worthwhile to push people in a school system or worse yet a testing office to explain themselves. What skills exactly is this test measuring? How does it measure them? How accurate is it known to be? What does it predict? What levels are considered within the normal range, and how far inside or outside that range is this child? How far outside the normal range is considered to be “disabled” and get special services? Or how much discrepancy between two tests is considered “disabled”, if your area uses that model?
These two are important and are often glossed over: How does this skill being tested relate to anything the child is expected to do in the classroom? What is being done to teach these skills to the child, and what should be done?

A *good* psychological tester can answer these questions and can direct you to a bulletin put out by the test publisher that explains all this in detail, as well as state laws and policies that define special ed guidelines and cutoffs. Good testers are rarer than hen’s teeth, however. Most teachers and an unfortunate number of testing “experts” give tests as a bizarre form of ritual. When you push them with the what, why, and how questions (and you do have to be insistent, to get around evasions and excuses and stonewalling) they will react with confusion and defensiveness. This is worth doing when they are giving you the “we’re the experts and we know best” line. In general (with a few notable stellar exceptions) they aren’t and they don’t.

Tests are useful as a snapshot of abilities that can be kept in a record and used to check on progress. But the test doesn’t represent total learning any more than the flat still snapshot represents the total living and active child. Once you and the school have this clear, you can use the test scores as a useful piece of information, but not on the same level as the commandments.