stanford achievement test scores

I’ll be interested in the responses you get to this post too, as my NLD son has consistently fared much better on the Stanford tests than he seems to do in the classroom or in our state-mandated “MCAS” testing.

Karen

I am just guessing but wonder if there is less time pressure. This would help kids who know material but are slower processers.

Beth

Beth,
While I can’t be sure about this, I remember my son saying that one day they had 1 hr. to do 45 questions and another time they had 30 min. to do 30 questions. It should be noted that these individual tests were not all done on the same day but spaced out over a two week time period. I really don’t know how it is recommmended that they be given. Since the school is private, they can use the tests however they wish, I guess.

Only two tests had 30 questions. One was the math procedures which I think is “just the facts” (computation) without any problem solving and the other was the reading vocabulary. I do not know the time constraints on either test but he did less well on the math procedures.

What concerns me about these results is that the teacher now thinks he is much more capable than we believe he actually is (based on last yr’s exhaustive testing )and the expectations will rise - not that I think he shouldn’t be held to the same standards as the others but we cannot afford a repeat of his 2nd gr. experience. He was an emotional wreck (as were we). Our concerns (and that of his therapist) is that he has significant diffficulty with organization, both of thoughts and of his personal space, which adversely affects his ability to produce written work at the level of most of his peers without a great deal of teacher/parent intervention. Also, due to his “processing out” dysfunction, he does take longer to come up with the correct answer than most of his peers.

It seems to me that perhaps this particular test gave a lot of time in general, unlike the WCJ where he was asked to do something in 3 minutes.

The Stanford test is a group test and it’s multiple choice; the Woodcock-Johnson tests make the student think of responses independently. Bright students can skim through and make good guesses on standardized tests, but have more difficulty with the kinds of tasks that they actually have to do in a classroom (or living) situation. Also, some tests are just easier than others.

How would you as a parent know that a child did well just because a test is easier? The system uses these tests to “place” our children in ability groups if these tests are not acuratte for that purpose why give them. There are so many different ones SAT, Terra Nova, ITBS, MAT7, MAT8 on and on. Then on top of that they have the state mandated tests such as TASS, ISAT, CAT, ect. There is no web-site you can go to to see how these tests rate against each other. The schools use them to boast about how well they are doing teaching our children but if the scores are low say they don’t reflect the childs true ability. Yet my LD son did do well on the test given and the school tried to tell us it reflected he was able to take all regular classes next year with just support services. Seems like a double edge sword you ask me.

What you have to understand is that SAT testing is required through all school systems, it does not matter if the child is in public school or not , all of them will face this National test. By the way it is wonderful that your child did great you should focus on the success of your child and thank the teachers that have helped along the way. Look at it this way, the SAT testing allows all parents to see where their child has the weakest and strongest strenghts. Also, it allows us to see where we need to help and intervene with a teacher in order to help our children. Heads up! he did great!

I’m sure there is less time pressure than during actual classroom time, but MCAS is untimed also, so that isn’t a factor in why his scoresare so different in the two sets of standardized testing.

Karen

I’m still fishing–perhaps one test asks different types of questions than the other. For example, some tests are more “applied” knowledge while others are more rote knowledge. Your child might be better at what one tests evaluates than what the other does. In other words, he is at grade level or even above with certain types of questions but not others.

Could you get a teacher familar with both tests at his school to explain how the tests are different?

Beth

Beth,

I believe I will ask the guidance counseler for her take on this. She is familiar with both tests. I will also be in touch with the pyschologist who is working with him and see what he thinks. I’ll let you all know what I find out. Should be interesting. Were he getting special services from the school, I bet they’d want to stop providing them now , don’t you?

I do think that’s part of it… Stanfords are multiple choice, while MCAS requires lots of long written answers and explanations.

Karen

Karen,

I suspect then that skills at writing/ability to analyze/explain are being confounded with knowlege of content. Your son is able to do the work as long as he doesn’t have to explain it. You might get a sense of where the breakdown is by seeing if he can explain similar type things orally (which suggests it is the writing part is the problem) or whether explaining itself is the issue. I know my own son can often solve math problems, for example, correctly but is clueless as to explain the logic he used to do so. His writing skills are such that he wouldn’t be able to explain in writing but I know from doing some practice work for the state exams he took in March that he was unable to explain orally either.

I teach college and my exams are a mixture of multiple choice and short answer. I have noticed over the years that most student perform fairly equivalently on the two types of questions. But there are always some who perform much better in the written portion and those perform poorly on the written part but ace the multiple choice. Your son is obviously one of these uneven test takers.

Beth

That makes sense. As an NLD kid, he is much better at “knowing” things than putting that knowledge into practice. Like your son, writing is a big issue, but it’s not JUST the writing part… You can get a lot of information out of him if you ask leading questions, but if you just say, “Tell me what you know about X”, you either get nothing, or way more than you ever wanted to know.

He wrote a 7 page paper on the first Thanksgiving in 2nd grade (he only stopped there because after two weeks, the teacher decided she had to move him on to something else) but had almost NO written output for the rest of that year.

What worries me is that the teachers tell me they think he’s doing fine in terms of writing, but the MCAS puts him squarely in the middle of the “needs improvement” area, right across the board. It just makes me feel nervous.

Karen

We have definitely seen through the years that my son’s Stanford testing scores do NOT relate directly to how he does in the classroom. On an IEP, with the right supports and services he does very well. Without those supports and services he drowns. I made the mistake of allowing them to remove him from an IEP for 3rd grade and it was an unmitigated disaster. He was back on an IEP by the beginning of 4th grade. We won’t try that again any time soon.

Karen

Karen,

Again, it may be the difference between the two situations. Your son’s classroom teachers may be good at working with him—knowing how to get him to perform at his best—while a standardized test does not allow for that. The key, it seems to me, is two fold: keep working on his skills and make sure he gets good teaching!!!

It is my observation that students that are weak in an area respond very well to good teaching but are a disaster without it. People who are strong can deal with poor teaching. I wasn’t the strongest math student. In high school I had a D in Algebra the first marking period. My parents got me switched into another class (long story) and suddenly I had an A. I couldn’t teach myself Algebra. On the other hand, I had a lousy college Econ I teacher but got an A anyway. I basically taught myself and couldn’t believe how easy Econ II was when the teacher could teach!!!

Beth

I think the teachers teaching ability does play apart also. When I was in high school I had a D average in Algebra. The teacher challenged us and said any student who does better on the New York States regents exam then they have this year will earn that grade for the year. She gave us 9 weeks to prepare. I went to the library got books on it and taught myself. I received a 94 on the exam and got an A for the year. The following year I had a better teacher and the class was easier. My kids have also done better when the teachers have taught at different angles.

That makes a lot of sense. And it does go along with what we saw in the fall when he was in the hands of a BAD teacher. No matter what amount of SPED time they trhew at him or how much homework he did, he still didn’t do well, and was very stressed out. When we switched him to a new class, he _seems_ to be working less, he definitely has less SPED time, and he’s learning more anyway.

It’s still scary though when I look toward next year (middle school) where we have to find a team of THREE good teachers plus a good SPED teacher.

Karen

This is a group achievement test that compares your child to NATIONAL norms; if you are in a middle-class suburb, with middle-or-above SES, the norms for your public school district may be much higher than the national norms. This test is NOT a criterion referenced test(measuring how much of a given subject your child knows); students with above average intelligence and mild LD and a good school system do OK on these types of tests. The thing to learn is what your school does with the results, and what the results were for your district,

I don’t know if there is ever a time when we can relax with our kids regarding school. We have two more years until middle school and I am already dreading it. I also am dreading 4th grade, with increased writing and conceptual requirements!!

Just think how much time we would have if we didn’t have our kids to worry about!!!

Beth

Thank you all who responded. When I was able to see some sample questions for these tests it became apparent to me why my son was able to do so well. (Not only did he score high but he did so because he answered most all of the questions correctly, except math procedures.) These were tests of “recognition” vs “recall”. All the information was in front of him; he simply had to choose. He did less well in math procedure because he actually had to remember math facts. His LD relates to processing “out” from recall in an organized fashion.

I have no idea if this posting is too old for you to come back to check, but just in case I thought I would tell you a little about what I know about the Stanford Achievement test. I am a certified tester for this particular test, so I have given the test for several different grades, and my son has taken the test each year K-2. He will take the 3rd grade test next week. The times for each test and the number of questions (for grade 3) are as follows:

Math Procedures: 30 minutes/30 questions
Math Problem Solving: 50 minutes/46 questions
Reading Comprehension: 50 minutes/54 questions
Reading Vocabulary: 20 minutes/30 questions
Listening: 30 mintues/40 questions
Social Science: 25 minutes/40 questions
Language: 45 minutes/48 questions
Spelling: 15 minutes/30 questions
Science: 25 minutes/40 questions

Other grades may have variations on the number of questions and/or the amount of time for a given test.

The 3rd grade test answers can be either marked in the book or on a separate answer sheet, depending on the choice of the person who administered the test. I would assume that not having to refer to a separate answer sheet would have made the test much easier for a LD child, just because it was something else they didn’t have to worry about. I would certainly want to know which way he took the test.

I am a homeschool mom with a dyslexic daughter (grade 1.) Both my husband and I were diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age. I cannot speak for your child, but I know that by 3rd grade I had learned how to “pass” with standardized testing. Most of them (including Stanford) are multiple choice, and I could figure out at least one or two that were wrong and guess at the rest. Standardized testing was always easy for me, even though I somewhat struggled everywhere else. I got through school with very good grades because I could give the teachers the answers they wanted, but I didn’t learn a whole lot that way.

For a good web site that explains a little of how to interpret the test results, try http://www.bjup.com/services/testing/test_interpretation/achievement3.html.