Is it true that some children really don’t test well? Or could it be that all the
“children that don’t test well” are ADHD?
I have a bright ADHD student who seems to be able to learn the material just fine. Homework indicates that but her test scores would indicate that she didn’t grasp the material. When you add general carelessness to the equation, you have a bright child with really poor grades. What can you do to help this kind of child retain information longer and reduce the amount of carelessness, i.e. not completely reading the directions, skipping lines, misspelling simple words, or even worse, misspelling words that are already spelled correctly for you at the top of the page! Any advice?
Re: Testing
My older son has inattentive adhd, this describes his math performance to a T.
Other testing hasn’t been so bad this year but in math, his homework scores range from high 60’s to 100’s but he consistently fails his tests, as low as 44. His math teacher has told me in certain terms, he sees my son listening, paying attention, seems to know the material, gets to the test and all knowledge just disappears.
He is doing better on standardized tests in the past 2 years but his scores from 1st grade until 4th grade (when he qualified for sp.ed) were always in single digits. His first grade teacher told me that he was making patterns with the bubble sheet, this was when he still had trouble reading the word ‘and’ .
My son is very bright, in talking to him, no one would ever suspect a learning difference or a test taking problem. I never suspected it until 1st grade.
I have been reading a couple of Mel Levine’s books and I am beginning to think in addition to the attention problem that my son has a long term and short term/working memory problem (according to Dr. Levine, these three are related, it makes sense). Not sure how to go about getting this evaluated or remediated yet but I am looking into it.
Not sure if this answers your question, I think there are lots of reasons why folks test poorly, not just attention problems.
Amy
Re: Testing
There are some children who don’t test well that do not have ADHD. ADHD, though, certainly can be a challenge when taking tests. To make good suggestions, it would help to know if your child’s difficulty with tests is in all subjects across the board? Math as well as the others?
Most schools these days also weight homework heavily into the equation that produces a students’ grades so if her homework is done well, that should count for something and help to counter the effects of poor test scores.
Re: Testing
My son had this problem. Vision therapy has helped alot. So much so that I wonder if he is add at all.
He has just gotten much better at taking the time to read the test now that he can visually process the information.
My son was the same too in that he always seemed to be learning but could not demonstrate all that he learned on tests. It was very difficult because the schools assumed he was at a much lower level than he truely was because of how he did on tests.
That was a major frustration for him and me.
What about Anita Archer’s Skills for school success programs? This kid needs to learn to slow down, underline important words, she needs to be taught strategies. I had the same problems as a college student and I had to learn test taking strategies to highlight the questions, know the trigger words, how to catch teh foils, that knid of thing so I wouldn’t miss those important details.